Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka
different due to institutional environment, working, norms,
attitudes, citizenship practices and behaviour. The chapter also
examines the limitations in accessing governance structures and
social rights in an ethnically stratified context of Sri Lanka.
The first part of the chapter provides the introduction and
design of the paper followed by theoretical standpoints on the
quality of government, whilst the second part analyses the
empirical evidence, with a view to finding the relationship
between access to governance, institutional variables, and quality
of government and their influence on one another. The third part
presents the conclusions, contribution, and implications of the
study.
Methodology
This chapter is an output of a qualitative study carried out
in Nuwara Eliya, Kandy, and Badulla districts between 2015 and
2016 for a period of eight months. The study was conducted as
part of a PhD project titled “Citizenship rights, public service
delivery and the quality of government in Sri Lanka”, and my
focus here is to present and analyse the qualitative data collected
from purposively selected 54 respondents. The study areas and
public institutions were selected in consultation with local leaders,
civil society activists, and the public, along with access to data and
geographical accessibility. Thus, I selected the following public
institutions from central and remote locations to learn about the
accessibility of public services, and the quality of institutions and
services: District and Divisional Secretariat Divisions, Grama
Niladharis, police, agriculture, hospitals, Education department,
Samurdhi Office/Bank and Ceylon Electricity Board. I collected
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