The Illusion of Easy Money

A sweeping national law has ended money-based online games. In Kashmir, it exposes both the lure and the damage of chasing quick wealth.

- Syed Arsalan Abid

Walk through any Kashmiri bazaar in recent years, and you would see the same sight: a young man bent over his phone, building a fantasy cricket team.

You would see a shopkeeper tapping cards on a screen between customers, and a college student debating which batsman to select for a league that promised winnings at midnight.

What looked like play was, in fact, a wager.

The country has now drawn a line.

Parliament's new law bans all money-based online games, whether poker, rummy, or fantasy cricket, sweeping away the old argument that some were games of “skill” rather than “chance.”

If money is involved, it is gambling. And it is now illegal.

For Kashmir, the decision cuts into a habit that had grown fast.

Apps promising quick earnings had become magnets amid unemployment. They were marketed as opportunity, a way to turn a few rupees into thousands. The promise was seductive in a place where many households live on daily wages or remittances.