The APL (above poverty line) rice spat, that took the entire Kerala Cabinet to do a much-watched sit-in in front of Parliament, is finally losing steam. An understanding of sorts has emerged that the Centre will restore the Kerala?s trimmed APL rice quota, provided the state government pays up a certain share of the paddy procured from the local farmers.
Kerala government, from its side, has decided to hand over 40,00 mt out of the locally lifted paddy to central pool, sources told FE. At the same time, there are also apprehensions that the current season?s harvest might not yield sufficient millable grade rice.
Last year, Kerala had refused to submit its share of paddy to FCI, following Centre trimming down its APL rice quota by more than 80% of the earlier allotment.
Last month, this had led to Kerala chief minister, his Cabinet-members and MPs from the state jointly organising a sit-in in front of Parliament. The issue had steamed sessions within the House for more than two days.
Up to March 2007 the Centre had allowed as much as 113,420 tonne of rice every month for distribution to APL cardholders. This quota was trimmed to 21,334 tonne from April 2007 and further to 17,056 tonne from April 2008, ?without mentioning reasons?, says state food minister C Divakaran. The quota has completely stopped since September this year.
This year state government is firefighting measures to check the shrinkage in paddy area. Last year, rice production was as low as 6.3 lakh tonnes, just 15% of the state?s own consumption requirement.
In a two major initiatives to boost paddy production, state is introducing a Rs 100-crore paddy production doubling programme and a legislation to ensure that the paddy land is not diverted for non-agricultural use.
To incentivise paddy cultivation, the state will soon issue ?green? cards to farmers, enabling them to avail interest-free paddy cultivation loans from local co-op banks, says Mullakkara.