Rebranding the police

There is much ado about the new uniforms being issued to the police in Punjab. Five regions of the province have already been issued with the new uniform but reservations have reached the highest levels and now the Punjab police department has set in motion a process seeking fresh feedback, and this despite there having already been such a process before the new uniform was approved. This is no small matter as 80,000 employees of the Punjab police are already wearing the new olive-green uniforms, replacing the black and khaki of many years standing. The plan was for the switch to be completed by the end of December this year. It has all come now to a screeching halt.

It would now appear that the police may revert to the black-and-khaki uniform rendering the entire exercise something of an expensive, not to say pointless, mistake. The IG has now constituted ‘a high-powered committee’ which will seek feedback from the police forces and submit a report at the earliest possible date.

Something somewhere has gone very awry. Given the considerable expense involved in the process of deciding on the new uniform then field-trialing it and issuing it by the tens of thousands the Punjab police ought not be back to square one. Not only that but the entire exercise begs the question as to whether a change of uniform changes anything, and in particular changes the way in which the Punjab police interact with their customers, the general public, that are the primary consumer of their services. The force as a whole has an entirely justified reputation for brutality, corruption, inefficiency and generally poor service that many are going to question and whether a change of feathers means there is a different bird underneath. We are confident that that is not the case, and if the Punjab police forces are to be effectively rebranded then rather than uniforms the investment should have been in the retraining and reorientation of a force out of touch with the times.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2017.

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