Tigers and traders

Tigers (force) vs traders: a contest of this kind is not usual in the country. But then there is very little that is usual about the government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan. It is unclear why in the first place, he needs to build a special force and use it to monitor prices. Some context for the rare individual who may still have been untouched by all this: Pakistan’s people are going through terrible inflationary pressures, and prices of everyday food items have reached heights that are now giving nightmares to even those who would have qualified for the title of ‘well-off’ just a couple of years back. It is in this background that the prime minister suggested that the infamous ‘Tiger Force’ – a group of ‘educated volunteers’ as per government representatives – be tasked with ‘checking’ pricing issues and hoarding in markets.

The Tiger Force was set up at the start of the coronavirus crisis earlier in the year. It seems to have turned into a kind of private arm that the government is determined to use for its own purposes. According to SAPM Usman Dar, the force is motivated, determined, honest and willing to go to any lengths to help the people. Traders, meanwhile, have their own problems with the idea of Tigers, most of them young, visiting their stores and checking prices. They argue that if sugar is being supplied to them at a certain rate, it is impossible for them to sell it below buying price. The issue of the Tiger Force taking over duties usually assigned to district governments also means that a bypass is being made and a new element brought into the matter of government. Normally the usual tasks of checking prices and managing affairs would be expected from any elected government. Creating new forces has never been a success. General Pervez Musharraf at his time created a force of volunteers of which we have heard very little since then. There were also private forces set up in the 1970s which have more or less vanished and served very little purpose. In this case, the Tigers could act to trigger further anger among traders.

On paper the force exists, but whether it has legitimacy in the minds of the people is a matter that will become clear in the next few days. Perhaps Imran Khan should assess the manner in which his government has chosen to work through a new force made up of individuals about whom we only have limited information, if any at all. And why the government is not able to set up mechanisms to check prices without the use of its Tigers. Then there is the forever nagging question of under which law the force has been established, how it functions and what its ToRs etc are.