An attempt was made to hijack the machinery of the Punjab Government last month. It happened on a singularly unsuspecting day. On the 11th of August, lawmakers gathered in the provincial assembly for a special session to mark Minorities Day. The purpose, as described by Speaker Malik Ahmed Khan, was to have a general discussion on the rights of minorities and recognise their contributions towards Pakistan.
But there was another agenda item on the list. While lawmakers were busy giving generic speeches and providing the usual lip service, the assembly was introduced to the Punjab Enforcement and Regulation Bill 2024.
The government was trying to play it cool. The bill called for the establishment of a Provincial Enforcement Authority. It is simply going to be a tool at the disposal of the bureaucracy and the Chief Minister to enforce price regulation and help retrieve encroached land, they claimed.
According to the government, the authority would have a small cadre of officers that would report to the CM House and would have powers to inspect and enforce marketplaces, and would ensure that rates for commodities set by the government are followed.
Even in this initial, tame introduction, the idea of such an authority is frustrating. It represents the worst of Punjab politics. The idea that the government can, without any consequences, set prices for commodities and force private traders in a supposedly free market to comply. There is also the assumption that such actions will convince voters to support whatever party is in power.
But the reality of this bill is far more sinister than plain old desperation politics.
A deeper reading of the draft bill reveals it is a vaguely worded, vain, overreaching piece of writing which, if passed, will prove to be a stain on the name of democratic legislation.
Using price controls as an excuse–already a terrible and historically rubbish economic strategy–the government wants to set up parallel policing and judicial institutions that will be loyal to the Chief Minister only. It means a new police force and new bureaucrats with magisterial powers. Essentially an entire government entity with the powers to police, investigate, arrest, bear arms, prosecute, adjudicate, fine, and imprison individuals in any kind of civil matter.
This entity would not just be limited to monitoring prices of commodities, but its reach would go to land disputes, taxation, private companies, and really any other business or individual they seem fit to target. In effect, it would be a worse idea than the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Luckily for everyone, the legislation has been blocked for now. Objections in committee meetings from well-meaning legislators, both from the treasury and opposition benches, have stalled the bill’s progression into becoming law. It also seems to have ruffled feathers among the Punjab Police, which fears a loss in relevance. But just how long can this be held at bay, and what could the consequences be? We start, of course, at the issue the government claims to be addressing: soaring prices.
A bit of history
In 1943, Britain was at war. Lord Wavell had just been appointed Viceroy of India, and upon assuming office received a directive from Churchill’s war cabinet telling him: ‘Your first duty is the defence of India from Japanese menace and invasion’. Few would realise the lasting impact this simple directive was to have on economic policy and thinking in the Indian Subcontinent.
The new war priority of the colonial state often overrode its earlier law and order concerns. Every official, in every department of government, was meant to respond to the needs of the war effort. But this load stretched the resources of the state, preventing it from functioning normally.
As India supplied men and goods, the British became increasingly concerned with rebellion and unrest in the country. Prices were high, and inflation was reacting to the largest war the world had ever witnessed. New government posts and departments proliferated, employing very large numbers of people; new policies were announced; and new legislations were promulgated. A stream of ordinances was issued under the Defence of India Rules. There emerged an official grandly titled the Controller of Capital Issues; a less loftily named Supply Department; a policy of price control, a foreign exchange control, as well as control of imports and exports. Massive amounts of money had to be raised. Balancing the budget was forgotten, deficit finance undertaken.
This was particularly evident in controls over food. The state in India undertook a huge new responsibility, which subsequently it could neither easily discard, nor properly fulfil. The first steps seemed innocent and innocuous enough. In an uncoordinated way, at local levels, government officials began to intervene in the grain market. For example, when grain prices began to rise in the United Provinces in 1941, anxious district magistrates began to impose price controls. Similarly, in 1942 in Punjab, deputy commissioners were empowered to fix maximum prices when they thought the situation demanded. In Bengal, when the famine of 1943 hit, the government hastily constituted a Foodgrains Policy Committee, which recommended government procurement, rationing and price controls. Rationing was extended to cover sugar, edible oils, coarse cloth and kerosene in addition to foodgrains.
By 1945, the war was over–but the policies of the empire remained the same. The Indian Freedom Movement was at its peak, and in tense times, the British maintained their wartime policies. In 1947, it was this colonial-era district administration system that both India and Pakistan inherited. A system in which bureaucratic administrators wielded the powers of not just judge, jury, and executioner, but also of investigator, enforcer, and complainant.
The excuse
There is a reason for the little history lesson above. Controlling prices was a policy introduced by the British during the Second World War, and implemented through their network of powerful district commissioners. When Partition happened soon after, India and Pakistan took different approaches to what they would do with this bureaucratic network.
Guided by Nehruvian Socialism, India continued the wartime efforts of the British and made price controls and rationing an integral feature in its economic policies. Pakistan took a different approach. Instead of focusing on using the bureaucracy as an economic management tool, the country’s military leadership focused on using it to monitor and govern for law and order. Economic policy largely favoured free market principles.
Over the decades, habits such as managing exchange rates and foreign reserves are still prevalent in Pakistan but the British era relic of price controls has not so much been a feature of economic policy as it has been a tool for photo-ops.
The story is pretty familiar. You have the Chief Minister conduct a ‘surprise’ visit to a Ramzan Bazaar with the usual crowd of lackeys and protocol flunkies hot on their heels. The CM derides high prices, hears a few grievances, says a few random monosyllabic words about hoarding, and promises to bring down prices. The photographers of the Directorate-General of Public Relations (DGPR)–the government’s PR arm–click away, and press releases are forwarded to every newspaper known to man.
So when Maryam Nawaz expressed an interest in visiting bazaars, announcing reductions in prices, and performing the press talk circuit, it was not too surprising. At best, it was her trying to be politically expedient given her party’s popularity problem. At worst, it was plain stupidity.
Controlling prices is terrible economic policymaking because of a few basic principles. The fear of inflation seems to dominate Pakistan’s discussion of many economic policies that have little to do with inflation or the cost of living. For example, both the public debate and the political debate over what prices the government should set for its agencies’ sales of wheat and fuels is dominated by a widespread belief that raising these prices, or using a flexible market-determined pricing policy, would cause inflation.
Look at it this way. Maryam Nawaz thinks the average voter that will determine her political future is poor and cannot afford basic commodities for their family. She decides she will, with a wave of her pen, cut prices down for certain commodities. But what is she hoping to achieve from this? In these conditions, the hope of the CM would be that people save money from this reduced price and buy other products. So if Maryam Nawaz has decreased the price of, say, cooking oil, people will try to use the money they save to buy more sugar.
Here’s the problem: if the set price for cooking oil is lower than what the market will bear, the producers of cooking oil–who have to buy their raw materials from outside Pakistan–will simply not have enough money to buy what they need to make their product. There will be a shortage of the product, which the government will claim is because of “hoarders”.
Those hoarders do not exist. You know how we know that? Because everyone involved in supply chain management in Pakistan will tell you that the country has precious little storage capacity for any commodity. Where will these so-called hoarders put their selfishly kept supplies? The problem is not that enough of the product is not being SOLD at those lower-than-market prices. The problem is that not enough can be PRODUCED at those prices.
This basic economic principle was generally understood in Punjab for a long time. Sure, every major supermarket has a DC rate counter with exactly four bags of rice available, and there are still a few utility stores run by the Punjab Government, but by and large the prices of commodities in marketplaces have been left to the whims of the free market.
Much of this attitude was fostered in Punjab during the 10-year, two-term, tenure of Shehbaz Sharif as Chief Minister. It may be hard to remember after his terms as Prime Minister, but the younger Sharif was once considered a competent member of the Sharif Brothers Duo. And sure, he was as fond of a good photo-op as anyone else. But the price control tendencies of his administration were very specific. There was the Ramzan Bazaar which used to be set up every year at a cost of Rs10 billion to the government, and there were the many different iterations of the Sasti Roti Scheme. Other than these, the government stayed away from giving its verdict on how commodities should be priced, leaving it to the devices of demand and supply. Large portions of subsidies were instead left for public transport, and still more money was being pumped into the development budget and infrastructure.
Which is why it was not alarming when Maryam Nawaz expressed her desire to have a tighter clamp on inflation, or at least for things to appear that way. But then lawmakers were blindsided. On the 11th of August, as we stated at the beginning of this story, the Punjab Enforcement Authority Bill was presented to the assembly.
What the government wants you to think the bill is
This is not anything new. The Pakistani bureaucracy, particularly the district administration, has long missed the powers they had in the bureaucratic setup that the British left behind. Many of their political, policing, and magisterial powers were stripped by reforms made by the Bhutto administration, and later by the 18th Amendment signed and enacted during the government of Mr Bhutto’s son-in-law.
So everytime a new government comes to power, one of the complaints the bureaucratic machine brings up ad nauseum is their inability to ‘implement’ directives of the government because of their lack of powers. It was exactly this that led to the proposed Punjab Enforcement Authority.
When the Chief Minister expressed an interest in controlling prices, bureaucrats told her it would not be possible without extensive powers. The police do not listen to us so we cannot conduct raids ma’am, and even if they do we have no way to prosecute these people, and without punishment or imprisonment there is no way to implement the prices you want ma’am.
At least that is how we imagine the conversation to have gone.
As a high ranking source tells Profit, a team of bureaucrats delivered a presentation outlining what powers they wanted to be able to implement the CM’s vision. And Maryam Nawaz is too new at governing to know what proposals to trust, and which ones to reject.
Those are the sequence of events we reliably know of. What happened in between, whose idea this was, and how the bill came to be in the form it is in now are matters nobody seems to want to talk about. What we know is that the Punjab Enforcement Authority Bill was kept hush hush until the day it was presented.
On the day of its presentation, the government also claimed the authority was being created for “price controls, land grabbing, and other special assignments on the instruction of the government.” It would simply be another government institution that would be there specifically to enforce prices set by the government in different markets. So just your average lot of officers going around shutting down utility stores and Sunday Bazaars.
What the bill really is
The initial cause for alarm was over how vaguely worded the bill was. What did the government mean by any special assignments given on their discretion? Why was a law so vaguely termed? The wording made it seem like this authority would have a role to play far beyond just prices and encroachments. So when the bill went to committee, more things started to come to the fore.
The bill proposes the establishment of the Punjab Enforcement Authority, in itself a dystopia name that clearly indicates the desire to set up a parallel structure of government. The purpose of the authority would be to “oversee, spearhead and monitor the implementation of the policy guidelines issued by the Government.”
Sounds a little vague? It is.
The wording has deliberately been kept this way to allow this authority leeway to interfere wherever it feels fit. As one lawmaker who is also a practising lawyer tells us, this means the authority would have jurisdiction to “implement” government policies in marketplaces, on government land, but also over private businesses and individuals that they feel are going against government policy.
It gets worse. The authority is set to have a central board chaired by the Chief Minister, with the deputy chair being the Chief Secretary. The rest of the members of the board, with the exception of three MPAs and three private members appointed by the government, are all the secretaries of different departments, essentially a civil service majority. Underneath this board is an enforcement board in every single district of the province. These district boards are all chaired by that district’s deputy commissioner (DC) and his assistants.
These boards will all have under their authority and employ a number of different kinds of officers. The first in this structure will be enforcement officers. These will be individuals of Grade 18 or above responsible for different enforcement stations in every subdivision of every district.
These officers will be the main functionaries that will go around enforcing directives given under this bill if it becomes law. The powers of the enforcement officer will include conducting inspections and inquiries, registering FIRs, conducting investigations, making arrests, and issuing orders under the act, as well as recovering enforcement costs and penalties.
These officers will have an important economic function in terms of enforcing price controls, but they will essentially also have policing duties.
And it does not end there. Has an enforcement officer shut down your shop or made a raid on your place of business? Want to make a complaint? Well you are not supposed to go to a judge. Instead, you will go before a Hearing Officer. These officers also operate under the auspices of the Punjab Enforcement Authority, and will settle all matters investigated by enforcement officers. The bill includes provisions for Hearing Officers hearing cases related to fines, confiscation of carts, removal of any encroachments, and every other level of minor civil offence. It also has an overarching declaration to have the authority to hear any case that an enforcement officer may have picked up on.
Similarly, thes bill makes provisions for Investigation Officers with the power to “enter, inspect, search and seal any public property, building, place or any premises where he has reason to believe that an offence has occurred or there is apprehension of so happening;and the power to enter, inspect, search and seal any private property, building or place, subject to warrant or order of the Magistrate in whose jurisdiction such premises is situated.”
They have also been given the power to “use reasonable force, in case of retaliation or obstruction in performing the functions under the Act, and the power to collect evidence through electronic means to inquire or investigate, such as CCTV camera recording; video recording; audio recording; photographs; electronic data; caller data records; geo-fencing; mobile device tracking; cyber surveillance and monitoring; digital forensics; and, Artificial Intelligence detection.”
On top of this, they will also have a corp of sergeants under their authority who will have the right to arms. If you have not caught on yet, the bill is proposing the setting up of a parallel government operating full with policing and judicial powers. This entire authority will report to the bureaucracy, and in turn be loyal to the Chief Minister alone who is the ultimate authority in this matter.
The answer is in the constitution
So this is what we have. The Punjab Government tried to create a parallel police force and a basic judiciary under a vaguely worded act in the name of trying to contain inflation. For now, Profit has it on good authority that the act has been blocked by some well meaning legislators as well as the lobbying efforts of the Punjab Police, which raised the points that it had jurisdiction to train and shore up an armed force of individuals from amongst its own ranks or to seek out more officers.
The reason this was necessary was because the Chief Minister and her gaggle of favourite bureaucrats seem more than happy to try and take as much power as they possibly can. Whether that is to police private individuals and businesses without any institutional scrutiny, or to control prices is besides the point. And while the bill has been opposed in committee and has been sent for review and editing, unless the vague wording is changed it will not matter.
What boggles the mind more than anything else is that as far as enforcement is concerned, there is a solution plain and simple within the constitution. Bureaucrats always claim governance is difficult because they do not have enough powers to enforce the law and directives of the government. That leads to anti-democratic ideas. But there is an entire third tier of government missing in Pakistan that is required by the constitution: local governments.
Over time, the spirit of local government in Punjab has tried to take root and has been consistently thrown to the wind with very little regard. The details of all of the laws, their merits, demerits, and why they have not been implemented yet have been covered in great detail.
Read more: The great local government gambit
The crux of the matter, however, is that local government makes sense. We are not speaking here specifically of any local government acts that have been passed in Pakistan, but generally of a third tier of democracy as a concept. It is a more efficient administrative system and adds another tier to the democratic process, making accountability and access to said administrators a less arduous process than it currently is. It also allows communities to look out for and administer themselves in accordance with their own best interests, and leave legislators in the assemblies to the more important task of actually legislating instead of being caught up in gali mohalla riff raff.
But more than just being a third tier of democracy, having a local bodies system means having a new economic process. In essence, it is not just a new administrative stratification, but also involves the dispensation and spending of money. Things such as education and health that people automatically look towards the provincial government for would now be handled by local representatives. Perhaps most crucially, the ability of local governments to collect taxes and release their own schedule of taxation allows them to make their own money and spend it on themselves rather than waiting for the benevolence of the provincial or federal government.
Currently in Pakistan, the system that operates rather than local body governments is a bloated, vain, and self-contradictory bureaucracy where rather than elected representatives controlling local issues, the district is in essence the fief of a government appointed district commissioner (DC). This not just centralises authority, but means locals with a better understanding of the area’s politics and requirements are not in charge of decision making.
Empowered local governments offer a much better alternative. They are rooted in representative democracy, they offer good governance practices, some level of local economic management, basic services, and if the government is bothered enough to listen, they also offer local policing. The only problem is it seems the Punjab leadership seems more interested in establishing it authority more than any facade of “enforcement.”
