New Delhi: The wheels of UPA’s food wagon seemed to pull separate ways on Monday with Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and food minister KV Thomas separately meeting journalists to discuss the same thing: India’s expected grain production in 2011-12.

With an agriculture minister sore at the loss of food portfolio on one side and a new minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution on the other, policy-making has see-sawed between banning and then partially reopening exports of sugar. The flip-flops threaten to derail the two industries worth over R1 lakh crore by sequentially hurting farmers, exporters and investors in a range of listed companies.

While sugar and cotton have garnered the most interest, the ministers are split on almost everything else including milk exports and most disconcertingly, the UPA’s flagship Food Security Bill.

In order to defuse tension, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of the two ministers on April 30, which will also be attended by UPA's key troubleshooter and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and commerce minister Anand Sharma. Monday's meeting of Singh with Pawar was postponed. Substantive differences are unlikely to disappear as the two disgruntled ministers meet in an an empowered group of ministers on Wednesday. Pawar heads NCP, one of the key allies of the Congress, while Thomas is a Congress leader, lending political overtones to the standoff.

For the record, Pawar told reporters on Monday that all was well. “There are no differences nor there is any intention to corner anyone. All these issues (exports) are decided together.”

However, as a source tracking developments told FE, differences on exports are peripheral.

The two are ranged on opposite sides on the government's Food Security Bill.

Thomas has been championing the Bill which will impose a huge financial burden on the Centre and effectively nationalise the grain trade, a key agenda of the Congress party and its leader Sonia Gandhi. Pawar has strong objections to the Bill and has repeatedly told his colleagues in the government that it will be unmanageable to handle with the current public distribution system.

Amid festering differences, Pawar shot off a note to the Prime Minister early this month asking for supplementing NREGS wages with grains. Stung by the usurpation of his domain, Thomas responded by suggesting the same to rural development minister Jairam Ramesh in a letter.

In the cotton and sugar export cases, Pawar accused Thomas of supporting industries at the expense of farmers – serious accusations in a coalition which paints itself as 'farm-friendly' – prompting Thomas to counter Pawar in opening up exports. As a result, bureaucrats in the two ministries which have seen fairly seamless movements till recently have been forced to take sides.