Housie ring on the rise again
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, November 28 2022: Local clubs, organisations and group of players organising Housie draw as a way of crowdsourcing fund for non profit work is often considered a good way to drive fund for certain meaningful purposes.

However, some group of individuals, possibly a ring, operating in a commercial way just to earn easy money is a whole new dimen sion unacceptable to the society.

About a decade ago, when such rings started to convert the practice as a way of earning easy money, the erstwhile Federation of Regional Indigenous Society (FRE1NDS) put a blanket ban on organising Housie.

The ban was effective in curbing such unscrupulous activities.

Local clubs or organisations requiring to organise such fund drive had to take prior permission from the Society.

However, those rings of Housie organisers seem to be on the rise yet again as one can see such Housie draw with huge prize pools almost every day in some areas, especially in Kakwa, Canchipur, Pishum, Chingamakhong and Kwakeithel.

Interestingly, the organiser is often an entity, whose name is not familiar either with the locality or the state.

In short, the organising bodies are not any publicly known CSOs or familiar with local club where the event is organised.

They hire the ground or community hall to organise the Housie by paying a small hiring charge to the local club or organisation concerned, and take away all the profits with them.

These organisers often include popular cars, motorcycles and scooters in their prize pools to attract people.

Ticket price starts from Rs 500 and goes all the way up to Rs 3000.They cite the reason for organising the Housie draw as a fund drive for the organisation.

In such a situation, the question that pops up in the mind of the people is if those rings of Housie draws are on the rise again.

The participants are drawn by the attractive prize pools and they probably don't feel any difference if they lose the ticket price in pursuit of luck to get their hands on the prizes.

At the same time, there could also be participants from poor families, who want to try their luck to win the attractive prizes, which could pull them out from their misery, at least to an extent.

Many of these participants will definitely face backlashes from their family members.

Moreover, tickets possessed by undercover agents of the organisers winning the full house prize are often an allegation raised against the organisers.

On the other hand, there is the question of legality in organising Housie draws though it is not termed as a form of gambling under the Public Gambling Act, 1867.In order to curb the uncontrolled and unreasonable manner of organising Housie draws, the government put a ban and made it mandatory for organisers to seek prior permission from the district administration for such events.

Amid the arrangement, organising such events in the name of fund drives by some group of people raises the question on the sincerity of the government in banning Housie draw.

One interesting fact is that of Housie draws are organ -ised on daily basis just in front of a particular police station and the police are doing nothing to prevent the activities.

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