Former Deputy Chief Minister Bindo Lanong has described the idea of setting up casinos in Meghalaya as a total nonsense.
“I think the idea of setting up casinos in a small and poor state like Meghalaya is absolute nonsense,” he told Highland Post recently.
He said that this concept sounds right in the metros but is absurd in a small and poor state like Meghalaya, where 80 percent of the people are still struggling for their livelihood.
The government had hoped to earn plenty of revenue from the casinos and, to assuage fears of locals becoming addicted to gambling in them, would have prevented Meghalayans from entering them as punters. However, these arguments failed to convince civil society and the government decided to forego the idea of casinos, at least for now.
When asked about the safeguard of not allowing locals to gamble in the casinos, Lanong ridiculed the suggestion. “Will there be a law such as that? You can at the most appeal but how can you stop someone? Tell them to make a law that states locals are prohibited,” he stated.
Referring to the common proverb ‘curiosity killed the cat’, he said that locals will go to see what the casinos are like and gradually become addicted to gambing there.
“Whatever others may say, the majority of people living in Meghalaya are Christian and even the majority of the cabinet ministers are Christian and with so many Christian institutions, etc I don’t think that this fits in,” he said. “You want to promote tourism. There are many other ways of promoting tourism but not through gambling.”
