The Hindu Editorial Analysis : 31st March 2023

31/03/2023

Table of Contents

The Hindu Editorial Analysis

The Importance of Reading The Hindu Editorial: Reading The Hindu newspaper has several benefits, including improving reading skills, facilitating comprehension, staying informed of current events, enhancing essay writing, and more. For individuals aiming for a career in banking, reading editorials is crucial for vocabulary building. In this article, we will examine today’s editorials, provide practice questions, and highlight important vocabulary words.

Gambling and Gaming.

The union government’s proposed measures for regulating online gaming in a draft amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Liability and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 leave several questions unanswered.

Some of these proposed measures, such as the establishment of a self-regulatory body, collection of know-your-customer (KYC) information from players, and appointment of a grievance o!cer within the company, are already in place.
These are moves that industry bodies representing such companies have encouraged. States such as Tamil Nadu want much stricter regulation of the sector than what is being proposed by the Centre in the draft, particularly for gambling with real money.
The Centre’s draft remains ambiguous on the question of whether States can have additional restrictions.So far, the industry has staved o” several bans by mounting legal challenges arguing that they are games of skill and not those purely dependent on chance — a tenuous distinction for real money gaming.
Still, games that require wagering are outlawed in the physical form under the colonial Public Gambling Act, 1867 or States’ own gambling laws.

A clear answer should come from the Union government on whether States are empowered to prohibit these games online as they do o%ine. While the gaming industry has huge potential as an economic driver of growth in India,there is a strong case for robust regulation.
The government has indicated that the definition of an ‘online game’, which is limited in the draft amendment to wagering platforms, may be expanded in future to include all games broadly.

Societies around the world have grappled with the effects of video games on young players, and the addictive cycles that some gamers can get stuck in; China, for instance, has limited the number of hours that young gamers are allowed to play daily, after which they are locked out for the day.
Care and restraint must be exercised when pondering similar steps in India, lest the government introduces uncertainty for both small domestic game developers and large international studios with Indian audiences.

Practice Questions:

Why does the union government propose measures for regulating online gaming in a draft amendment to the Information Technology?
What does the government say about the definition of online games?

Important Vocabs:

Pondering- think about something carefully or for a long time
Grappled- to get hold of somebody/something and fight with or try to control him/her/it
Wager- risk against someone else’s on the basis of the outcome of an unpredictable event
Grievance- something that you think is unfair and that you want to complain or protest about
Ambiguous- having more than one possible meaning