The Indian Minister of Finance, Anurag Thakur, has declared that his country should move down the path of legalizing and regulating gambling instead of restricting or banning the activity.
The minister made those remarks at an ICICI Securities event and used the example of betting on cricket to push his idea through. In fact, a lot of people in India are betting on cricket, which is the most popular sport in the country, but they do that illegally.
That opens the door to all kinds of shady practices in the sport, from widespread match fixing to bribery and corruption. Anurag Thakur insists that moving cricket betting and other forms of gambling on the legal side would help stop those “unholy practices” and would also bring some much-needed revenues into the state’s coffers.