In Orwell's essay, Shooting an Elephant, what problem is he asked to solve?

In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell recounts an event that occurred while he was a sub-divisional police officer in a town in Burma. Specifically, Orwell tells the reader of his role in first investigating the report of a loose elephant, then shooting the elephant. What is not clear from the narrative is what is expected of Orwell by his superiors, and whether the loose elephant is the only problem he needs to solve.

When introducing the reader to the incident, Orwell writes:

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out.

From this, the reader may conclude that Orwell is asked to solve the problem of the loose elephant, which Orwell quickly learns has done considerable damage to the bazaar and killed livestock. However, he is not given specific orders to do anything in particular about the elephant. He is asked to do something about the situation.

The situation in which Orwell finds himself is not merely one in which a dangerous animal is on the loose; the people of the town grow to expect Orwell, as the representative of the government present on the scene, to act, especially after they find that the elephant has killed a person. It is this pressure to act as well as the fear of appearing foolish that lead Orwell to shoot the elephant, even though it appears to present no imminent danger when he finally finds it.

On the surface, the problem is the loose elephant. However, the larger problem may be managing the people of the town and their expectations of how Orwell and, by extension, the government will act. In doing something about the elephant, Orwell is able to take care of the entire situation, which might have included some unrest by the townspeople had Orwell not acted as he did.