First of all employing the volunteer tiger force to monitor prices, which seems like the prime minister’s novel idea, is a tacit admission of the failure of the district administration when it comes to controlling runaway prices of essential items. After all, you can’t really have charged young ones, with the backing of the state for all intents and purposes, breathing down the necks of traders and then expect the whole thing to go smoothly. That is so especially since most outlets have raised prices because supply bottlenecks have increased their own costs, etc, and correcting this anomaly would require straightening out the supply chain not sorting out retailers affected by disruptions in it. Little surprise, then, that this novelty has left traders scratching their heads. The fact of the matter is that the government has singularly failed to control prices of essential items, especially sugar and wheat, despite blaming everybody other than itself, including former governments and special interest “mafias,” and promising to put things right and failing every time. Things have reached a point that senior ministers are simply unable to defend the government and its policies anymore. Even the loyal planning and development minister, Asad Umar, was forced to draw the cabinet’s attention towards the fact that prices of sugar and wheat flour, the country’s staple diet, had risen significantly in the tenure of the present government. Sugar was sold at Rs55.84 per kg back in August 2018 and it was Rs96.62 per kg at the end of September 2020. Wheat, which makes up the basic food of almost all of the country’s population, sells for 53 percent more than what it went for in August 2018. And people are increasingly finding it unacceptable that all the government can do about their empty stomachs is divert all the blame towards cartels and opposition politicians. All this ought to seriously make the government feel the heat. It’s not just food items. Soon it’ll have to cave in to IMF’s demands and jack up energy prices as well. And let’s not forget that such things only give the opposition, an 11-party alliance of whom is gearing up to send the government packing, just the kind of firepower that it would be looking for right now. It is difficult to see how the tiger force can improve this situation. *