I use emotions for many and reason for few.
Adolf hitler
Humans are first emotional beings, then rational beings. Meaning in life is derived emotionally, not rationally. A person chooses to use more of his emotions to react to a certain situation or resolve issues rather than using logic and/or brainpower.
Even in our day-to-day lives, we use more emotions than reason on most occasions. So, we can say that a human being is an emotional being who sometimes reasons.
Reasoning helps us to refine our emotions while emotions help us to evaluate and validate our reasoning. To see things more clearly, we need to depend on both. Overdependence on either is a recipe for disaster.
But the majority of people make decisions from emotion rather than reasoned thought – especially when it comes to matters related to religion, politics and sports. Hence, throughout our history, leaders have used politics, sports and religion as the best cocktail to control the masses.
In ancient Rome, they gave the people bread and circuses. They kept the population busy with entertainment. Other regimes used other tactics, but it’s all about control.
How do they do that? Promote new means of entertainment, diminish education, limit the culture, censor information or any means of individual expression. This is a pattern that repeats itself throughout history. Currently, India is showing itself to be no exception.
Digital games: a new means of control
In the 21st Century, with the evolution of technology, there are new means of control – such as fake news, hashtags, social media call-outs and trolling – to control mass behavior and aggressively push state propaganda to corrupt the individual’s reason.
Online Games are the new entrants on the list. Gamification is quite common. That’s the use of video or online games to replicate real-life activities or systems to motivate people or change their behavior.
America’s Army – a series of first-person shooter video games from the US Army – was designed to educate and recruit potential soldiers. The game justified the use of violence by the US military as a necessary defense of freedom and legitimized US foreign policy through the army’s “core values,” such as honor, duty, and personal courage.
Totalitarian dictatorships also opt for video games to communicate their versions of reality, which might occasionally go to absurd lengths. For Example: A north Korean state-controlled news website features a variety of flash games, which allow players to “physically” abuse Japanese, South Korean and American politicians.
Governments use video games for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is to exert control over their populations. Young or teen minds can be easily fascinated or manipulated through these games.
“Games” based on shootings are also a factor behind real-life violence including mass shootings and the rise in teen crime as seen in the US. Despite knowing all gaming’s ill effects, its negative impact on society, a government shouldn’t be promoting it publicly.
Recently Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, at an event for gamers, that the gaming industry does not require regulation. He asserted that gaming must remain free.
That’s quite contradictory because, a few years back, it was Modi who launched the Fit India Movement to encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle. He noted during his monthly radio address that a few decades earlier “a normal person would walk eight-to-ten kilometers in a day, do cycling or run. But physical activity has gone down with the advent of technology.”
We’re left to wonder whether he’s had a change of heart or there is something else going on beneath the surface.
Search for the new taxpayer community
According to the “State of India Gaming Report” released by Google and Lumikai last year, the country has around 568 million gamers, and half of these are between the ages of 18 to 30.
With each passing year, games are becoming more and more popular and sought after by a wide audience of users and a vast population. The total gamer base is projected to reach 916 million by 2028 and 240 million of them will be paying for games.
The Industry witnessed a revenue surge of US$3.1 billion in FY23 , a notable increase of 19% from the previous figure of $2.6 billion. By 2028, the market size of the gaming industry in India will grow to $7.5 billion. The central government is aiming to collect $1.7 billion in GST from online gambling platforms in the upcoming fiscal year.
Interestingly, according to the Election Commission (EC), around 211 million voters in India this year will fall into the age group of 18-29 years. Since the 2019 elections, the country has added 20 million young electors in the age group of 18 to 29.
What’s interesting is that these online gaming and gambling companies had been the biggest donors to political parties via the electoral bonds scheme that was struck down by the Supreme Court in February.
According to Election Commission data, the biggest purchaser of electoral bonds was lottery and gaming company Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt Ltd, which bought bonds worth over $156.7m between 2019 and 2024. This may have been one of the factors behind Modi’s’ change in attitude.
Certainly, the more young people played the games and did the gambling, the more revenue the BJP got.
Looking into the future, ignoring such a large voter base, one that is also going to generate a major source of political funds one way or another, is not an idea guaranteed to appeal to politicians – but egg the youngsters on in the gaming rooms at what cost?
Modi vision of a generation of gamers and gamblers
In a survey conducted in India in 2021, 65 percent of respondents under the age of 20 said that they were ready to give up food and sleep to play online games. Many even confessed they were ready to steal their parents’ money for playing online games or online gambling through fantasy leagues.
In India, among all sports cricket is considered a religion. According to the Think Change Forum’s report in October 2023, it’s estimated that more than 140 million people in India participate in betting and gambling regularly and this number shoots up to 370 million during the Indian Premier League (IPL) championships, held each year around the same time as US basketball’s March Madness.
The increasing popularity of online gambling in India can be attributed to several factors:
- convenience and easily accessible platform,
- the tech-savvy young generation,
- no strict regulation on the entry age and
- promotion by sports and film celebrities.
A report from Al-Jazeera in July 2023 states the sad ground reality and its ill effect. In a recent incident, online betting addiction during IPL cost a Bengaluru engineer 15 million rupees and his wife’s life. In Uttar Pradesh, in a payback plan a man borrowed money for online gaming and killed his mother.
Gaming disorder is a mental health ailment that needs to be addressed with sophistication and care.
A recent national survey in India indicates that 60% of youngsters aged nine to 17 spend more than three hours daily on social media or gaming platforms.
Nearly 41% of India’s population – around 550 million people – are below 20 years of age, which means that online gaming addiction will ruin an entire generation.
There was a time when India produced world-class doctors, scientists, economists and engineers who became CEOs of top global companies and headed international organizations, bringing laurels to the country.
But now Modi’s New India Vision includes a wider space for gamers and gamblers. That’s the reason the core issues of unemployment, inflation, improving education infrastructure and doubling farm income were missing from the BJP Manifesto.
In this election, the Indian middle class faces a tough choice: Support Modi’s vision or protect their children’s future.
