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In an article titled “A peek into the World Cup betting racket” published in June 2018, ApEx had discussed a ‘rare group of gamblers’ who were betting via international bookmaking sites using the crypto-currencies banned in Nepal.

Tiwari, an IT student and a self-styled “crypto trader” who wishes to be identified only by his surname, had spilled the beans on how Nepal’s crypto-trading youths had found a way to illegally load their international betting accounts using crypto-currencies. Tiwari used to transfer crypto-currency from crypto-wallet Bittrex to the betting site 1xBet, converting them into dollars.

Three years later, the ‘rare group of gamblers’ is rare no more, Tiwari tells us, although tracking and talking to them was extremely difficult for ApEx this time. Still, following some groups on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, we found out that the number of crypto-traders in the country has increased, and so have gamblers using international websites.

Between our conversation with Tiwari in mid-2018 to now, he claims to have lost close to Rs 40 million on sports betting alone. “I lost everything I earned from crypto-currency trading,” Tiwari says. “I had earned a lot in the bullish market when the Bitcoins I bought for $2200 reached $64,000.” Tiwari had become a full-time crypto-trader, staying online most of the time. Gambling was entertainment at the start. Then it got addictive to the point that he was doing it all the time, eventually losing almost all his crypto holdings. 

Hassle-free betting

Most betting websites need users to verify their accounts by uploading their passports and even bank statements. Unverified betting accounts are at the risk of being shut down anytime and holders can’t make withdrawals in case they win. “But 1xBet is the best for Nepalis,” Tiwari says. “You can register without any complications, and loading the account with crypto-currency takes just five minutes.”

Tiwari knows of many other users making deposits on the 1xBet site through crypto-currencies. But even more are using the local wallet Khalti, he says. During the last Euro Cup (June 11-July 11), Khalti got some attention on social media when a few people posted about how it was being used to deposit money into 1xBet accounts locally. (The Cyprus-based company’s website still has a notice, in both Nepali and English, mentioning the Khalti app.)

Amit Agrawal, the co-founder and director of Khalti, refutes all links between Khalti and 1xBet. “We were shocked when we found out,” says Agrawal. “This has nothing to do with Khalti. It’s just that some unscrupulous users have been making transactions through our app.” Agrawal informs that Khalti has already sent legal notices to 1xBet and is also working with Nepal Rastra Bank to identify and penalize offenders. The repeated use of Khalti accounts on the betting site has harmed the brand’s image and continuous monitoring of transactions after the discovery is costing the startup precious time and resources. Khalti has already suspended around 1,500 accounts.

As most transactions on digital wallets like Khalti are done by individuals, it is difficult to trace which users are using their accounts for betting. Also, crypto-currency transactions are mostly untraceable as the whole structure of the Blockchain lets its users remain anonymous. Moreover, most users also mask their IP addresses.

Ishwar, an employee at a private company, says sports-betting is a good side hustle. “If you are a disciplined gambler, you can earn a significant amount of money,” he says. But Ishwar himself has lost more than Rs 100,000 in under a year. Still, he finds the prospects of making money through gambling enticing and feels it should be legalized and regulated.

A Khalti user in the past, he is now using local agents to load his betting account. “There is so much money going out and coming in through betting sites,” Ishwar says. “Only if the government regulated it, it could earn a lot of revenue through taxes.” Besides taxes, localized betting houses could also create jobs. 

Why not legalize?

Another “gamester” Durgesh, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, had met Ishwar via a social media group where like-minded youths like him speculate on upcoming sporting events. The group’s discussion ranges from international events like the Euro Cup to club football to test cricket to tennis and even horse races. The summer Olympics in Tokyo allowed them to bet on otherwise rarely considered events like table tennis and swimming.

“Sports betting is getting popular as the Nepali youths’ interest in international sports is increasing. So it would be best for the government to legalize local bookmaking companies,” Durgesh says. “That way, the government can earn revenue while all the money remains in Nepal.”

Senior economist and Nepal Planning Commission Vice-Chairman Biswo Poudel agrees that if sports betting is ever legalized, the whole system should be within Nepal. “By default, sports betting is designed in a way that the house always wins,” says Poudel. “So the ultimate beneficiary from the gambling channel should be based in Nepal.”

But Poudel also warns of the risks of legalization. Gambling is culturally considered a “sin” in Nepal, Poudel explains, and there is only a small segment of the population that understands the risks involved. And in any economy, if the number of risk-takers increases, the poverty rate will rise relatively. Also, adds Poudel, maintaining best practices in gambling channels in terms of information flow and reliability is difficult. He thus feels that the ban on gambling is justified and should be sustained.

Tiwari and Agrawal—both of whom consider themselves victims of gambling—agree that the ban should remain. “If the government wants to legalize gambling, let it open local casinos for Nepalis first,” Agrawal says. “But these betting sites should be banned the same way porn sites are.”

“The gambling market opens 24/7 and it can be very addictive,” Tiwari adds. Tiwari had started betting smaller amounts on things such as the number of corners in a football match and the number of runs by a cricket team . “I also found out that there’s a lot of match-fixing, especially in basketball and volleyball,” Tiwari adds. “Thus, no one should be allowed to gamble. Easy money makes people greedy.” 

Fightback begins

Phanindra Mani Pokharel, joint secretary and spokesperson at the Ministry of Home Affairs, says betting cannot be legalized under any condition. Pokharel informs that the police are maintaining strict vigil and apprehending anyone involved in illegal sports betting.

“We have also found that most of those into sports betting are technologically savvy,” Pokharel adds. “There’s not much we can do unless we get specific complaints or information.” Yet, as Pokharel suggests, most digital transactions that leave no evidence have left the regulators helpless.

Still, police have been cracking down on gambling based on whatever information they are getting. The latest crackdown came on July 7 when the Metropolitan Crime Division arrested eight individuals, including three Indian nationals, for organizing illegal betting rackets in Nepal. Over Rs. 3.4 million was seized from them. 

On May 25, police had arrested 11 individuals—six of them Indian nationals—in Kathmandu for betting during the Indian Premier League 2020.

A major arrest dates back to May 2018 when the Metropolitan Police Range Office, Kathmandu nabbed six people including former national footballer Anjan KC for running an IPL betting racket. According to the police, by the time they were arrested, the betting group had carried out transactions worth Rs 700 million during that IPL season.

ApEx had also reported in April 2021 about the gambling nexus in eastern Nepal, based in Biratnagar. Athar Ansari, considered one of the biggest bookmakers in the region, had begun operations as soon as the IPL started on April 9. Ansari, using his gang of a dozen or so bookies, has allegedly made millions of rupees over the past decade, with his financial connections being traced to India and even Dubai. Ansari and his associates are on the run after they were found to be involved in a kidnapping.

According to Statista, a company specializing in market and consumer data, the US sports betting industry is growing apace. The legal sports betting revenue is forecast to reach $2.5 billion by 2021-end, and by 2025, grow to $8 billion. In a recent report published in The European Business Review, Gross gambling revenue (GGR) in Europe, including online lottery, online casinos, and sports betting, was worth 24.7 billion Euros in 2020. The region’s online gambling market is expected to reach $94 billion by 2024.

Such hard numbers are hard to find for Nepal that outlaws every kind of gambling, including sports betting. Still, such betting is evidently on the rise. By sports betting, we do not mean casual wagers between friends and families. ApEx has found many Nepalis who have become professional gamblers by using local bookmakers and online betting websites. So how big is the illegal Nepali sports betting market?

“How can we have data of something that’s illegal and completely under the radar?” replies Narayan Prasad Pokhrel, Deputy spokesperson and information officer at Nepal Rastra Bank, the country’s monetary regulator. “We are aware that some people are using local wallets and financial channels to circulate sports betting money and we are working to find the culprits.” As for cryptocurrency trading, all Pokhrel has to say is that it is an illegal activity that NRB strictly discourages.

Spokesperson for Nepal Police Basanta Bahadur Kunwar says the police too have no clue. “If it were regular gambling like playing cards or rolling dice, I could give you exact figures based on arrests made, but even estimating the volume of online gambling transactions is difficult,” Kunwar says.

ApEx talked to over a dozen or gamblers betting on international sporting events, including the Tokyo Olympics. One had lost Rs 100,000 in a year, while another had parted with Rs 40 million in under three years.

In the recent Euro Cup, we found people who bet as low as Rs 100 on a one-off match to someone who bet Rs 10,000 on every single match. Some occasional betters wagered as high as Rs 500,000 on a single match. According to our back-of-the-envelope calculation, around 3,000 people could have betted in the tournament, for a total haul of Rs 30 million. The annual Indian Premier League, say those in the know, is an even bigger draw for betters, with at least 20 times that sum put up for wager every year. Anecdotal evidence suggests the trend is on the up, and it could get a lot worse if left unchecked.

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The Civil Aviation Authority has formed a committee to recommend possible actions against airliners charging passengers exorbitantly citing the Covid-19 pandemic and various restrictions on mobility.

The five-member committee, led by Director-General Rajan Pokharel, was formed to look into prevailing legal provisions to take action against such airlines as the law against profiteering and black marketing was found to lack teeth in such matters.

“After we receive a report from the committee, we can decide the course of action against airlines that are fleecing passengers,” says an official at the authority requesting anonymity.

Following the emergence of the second wave of Covid-19 infections in Nepal and India, international airlines have considerably reduced the frequency of flights to the region. With passengers competing for limited seats, the airlines have hiked fares on almost all routes, says Sudhir Upadhyaya, general secretary at Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents.

Although prevailing laws outlaw profiteering on domestic routes, they can’t be used against international airlines, the official says, adding that the committee may recommend new laws to deal with the issue. International flights tickets are booked on the concerned airlines’ global ticketing system—this means passengers from all over the world compete for a seat on the plane.

According to passengers and ticketing agents, a return ticket to Australia could be bought for around Rs 80,000 until a few months ago. But the fare has now gone up to over Rs 120,000. Fares have also been increased for tickets to the Gulf, US, and Europe. Migrant workers spend more than a month of their salary to buy a ticket home or return to work. Students going abroad have also been affected as they face a tight deadline to join their universities.

Says Pokharel, “As of now, we don’t have concrete laws against profiteering in the airline business.”

The issue of exorbitant ticket prices has been a topic of discussion among officials from CAAN, the city police, and even the Ministry of Home Affairs. All the agencies have received complaints about expensive international flight tickets. “We will write to the Home Ministry on the committee’s recommendations when we finalize the report,” says Pokharel. 

Twenty-three people have so far filed complaints against various airlines for overcharging. The committee, which will also look at the complaints, has been busy discussing the issue with airline operators, ticketing agents, experts, and foreign employment recruitment agencies.

Critics argue that it might be too late until the committee prepares its recommendations and new laws are formulated. Until then,  Nepali passengers will have to continue shelling out a lot of money for international travel.

Twenty years ago, home science was an optional subject in the SLC syllabus. In my all-girls school, however, it was compulsory. We were taught to cook, sew petticoats and baby dresses, and knit socks and sweaters. Some of us wanted to study accounts while others wished for computer classes. But our principal insisted on home science because [in the future, when you were married and had children] “would you rush to the tailors’ and ask her to sew on a loose button on your husband’s shirt as he got ready for work?”

I’m married to a man who irons our clothes, cleans the bathroom and peels water-soaked almonds for breakfast in the morning and does many other chores that are traditionally and perhaps still considered a ‘woman’s job’. I’ve been berated by quite a few relatives for ‘allowing’ my husband to do these things around the house. I’ve also explicitly been told I’m not a ‘good’ wife. My house-help suggests that maybe she or I should set the table for lunch instead of dai. She rushes with the placemats if he hasn’t gotten around to it already. Men shouldn’t do these things, she tells me.

“The moment you are born, you are slotted into these boxes that determine what you can and can’t do, and how you should and shouldn’t be based on your gender. Our social setting and programming promote disparity from very early on,” says human rights activist Sabitra Dhakal.  

And indeed, women have always been conditioned to be a certain way and to live their lives in accordance to someone else’s—as a daughter, a wife, and a mother. Their roles in relation to others take precedence over who they are as individuals. Dhakal says women have a society-assigned identity. Society, she says, has long determined what is and isn’t accepted of women and a slight deviation is enough to warrant name calling and slut shaming.

Take for instance all the uproar over Priyanka Karki’s Instagram post where she is seen happily flaunting her baby bump. From calling her photos obscene to blaming her for polluting young minds, there’s no line that’s not been crossed. Thankfully, and more power to her, the actor says none of it has affected her. But what right did we have to violate her personal space in the first place? In a society where the neighbors will openly ask a newly-married couple when they are planning to have a baby, why is it unacceptable for a woman to want to document the various stages of it?

Durga Karki, advocate and author of the book Kumari Prasnaharu, says women have to face multiple barriers and limitations in life. The same conditions, she adds, don’t extend to men. Our culture today that controls, questions and ridicules women at every turn, is a result of years of unfairness and dominance. It’s going to take a lot of work, on a national level, for this to change, she adds.

The discourse on social media, on equality and empowerment, are important but it has to lead to actual laws and rights in favor of women if we are to ever hope for our societal structure to change. Conversations, though important, can only do so much, says Karki who believes our political climate and space also need to be welcoming of women in power. The government should lead by example and be liberal in its ideology of women and their rights.

But our society’s attitude towards women boils down to lack of respect and the unwillingness to give women any personal space, says journalist Anjali Subedi. This society, she says, also has a strict code of conduct for women and anything outside of it is unfathomable and unacceptable.

Worse, women aren’t women’s biggest cheerleaders. It’s the lack of a circle of support that makes it difficult for women to break free from the hegemony of men. Dhakal adds many are often quick to make statements like “I’m not that kind of a woman” while talking about themselves, which undermines women in general.

Rumi Rajbhandari, founder of Astitwa, a non-profit that works to rehabilitate victims of burn violence, says strong and independent women are still not appreciated. It can’t stomach a Priyanka Karki. It prefers its women meek and subservient. Anything else is an anomaly that needs to be put in place. This, she adds, is because the basis of a patriarchal society is oppression and women who don’t allow for it—who speak up, who go against the rules—are seen as threats.

Advocate Grishma Bista says women need to be more vocal and express themselves, unburdened by what the society might think or say. A mind-your-own-business attitude is what women need to have, she says. However, that’s easier said than done.

Rajbhandari says it’s only possible if and when women get strong family support. The problem right now, says Rajbhandari, is that women are told to keep quiet, let things go and not to ascertain their rights in order to maintain peace at home. The cost of this compromise is often women’s mental wellbeing, dignity and sense of self. But, let’s be honest here, when have we ever cared?  

“My mother always blames me for any misunderstanding between me and my husband. She tells me I must have done something wrong,” says Rajbhandari. This kind of mindset that puts men on a pedestal is what gives them more power and makes women vulnerable to all kinds of hardships and violence—physical, mental, and emotional.

My parents have been my biggest support system and I find that it gives me the confidence to stand up for myself. The knowledge that I’m not alone, that I might be contradicted in private but will be vehemently supported in public empowers me more than anything else. For a woman to grow and thrive, I believe, there must be people rallying behind her no matter what.

“If not family, then the support could come in the form of other women. A major setback in our society is that all too often women drag women down. I call them the gatekeepers of patriarchy. That needs to stop,” concludes Dhakal.