Gambling must also be fought on socio-cultural fronts
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THE spread of gambling, mostly taking place online under the guise of online gaming, from urban to rural areas, as New Age reported on Friday, is worrying as many young people are getting addicted to gambling. The issue warrants an early intervention, legal, political and social. What remains further worrying is the presence of gambling rackets, mostly international, that operate through local agents and siphon off a huge amount of money. While online gaming remains a way of gambling, in some cases, gambling takes place in the form of betting on international sports events, as the law enforcers say. Such a situation is also reported to be making some young people fall prey to various rackets. Sporting club-based casino and gambling are reported to have been in operation until September 2019 when the law enforcers started cracking down on such club activities, mainly, in Dhaka and other major cities. The crackdown stalled in a few months after some influential politicians, contractors and businesspeople had run into the dragnet. Gambling has now, as some law enforcement officials say, come to take place online, where people play the game and pay the money through the mobile money transfer system.
The law enforcers have conducted more than 50 raids across the country and arrested 275 people for their alleged involvement in casino business and other corrupt practices. The busting of some local and international gambling rackets and the detection of a huge amount of money having been siphoned off show that online gambling, mostly in the form of online gaming and betting on international sports events, has a wide prevalence and far-reaching implications. It is, therefore, for the law enforcement agencies to attend to the issue. But the government should also address the slow pace of investigation against some of the casino kingpins who were arrested in 2019 as such a delay may only add to the culture of impunity, which other kingpins think they enjoy. While the political will is needed to root out gambling and to stop, especially, the young people from getting addicted to gambling, only this may not resolve the problem. The government is reported to have blocked more than 20,000 web sites of gambling and immoral contents, but only shutting the ways cannot deterrently stop gambling. The government should also resolve the issue by putting in efforts to create the scope for young people to get involved in sports and cultural activities, which appear to have waned, or almost died, since the mid-1990s. Neighbourhood-based sporting and cultural clubs and reading and lending libraries, catering to the interests of the youth, that once were vibrant in villages, small town and cities have for long been dead.
While the government must work out a strategy to stop addiction to gambling through law enforcement fighting against the people controlling gambling and by reviving the sporting and cultural clubs and libraries to afford the youth the space that they need for development, the government must also ensure that the young people can be on jobs on completion of their studies and that the economic benefits reach them adequately in a sustainable manner.
