Kochi, APRIL 22: The LDF Government’s much-hyped People’s Food Production Programme has got caught in the CPI-CPI(M) turf war in the state Cabinet, even before the idea could be concretised.

The programme, which the Left believes will help the state cope better with a looming food crisis, involves leveraging local bodies to help pump paddy cultivation, besides milk, egg and meat output. Its thrust is on providing infrastructural and other inducements to improve farming and dairy sectors, with a big emphasis on getting farmers to return to paddy in a big way, in a scenario where increasingly large farm tracts in Kerala are receding from cultivation.

The programme was originally thought up by the state planning board as a coordinated effort of all state departments, each sharing components of the cost burden. But the Cabinet meeting today to finalise details had the CPI and CPI(M) ministers refusing to toe each other’s contrasting lines.

The CPI, which holds the food and agriculture portfolios, is learnt to have stressed that the two departments should have primacy in the implementation of the programme, and demanded a special Rs 200 crore allocation to see it through.

Both Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan and Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, of the CPI(M), are learnt to have shot the idea down, asking the food and agricultural departments to use their own funds.

CPI sources claimed the CPI(M) approach on the issue was a unilateral interference in its portfolios, adding that forking out from allocated funds would hit the functioning of its two departments. They said the issue would now go to the Left Democratic Front to sort out.

Kerala consmes about 40 lakh tonnes of rice a year, but produces no more than 6.35 lakh tonnes, while neighbouring Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka produce 11.7, 5.22 and 3.44 million tonnes respectively.

The picture is threatening to get worse this year with over 1 lakh tonnes of paddy lost last month in Kuttanad to heavy summer showers, accentuated by the CPI(M)’s traditional opposition to allowing farmers to use farm machines instead of the hardly sufficient manual labour to save the crop.