Incomplete Citizenship of the Plantation Community: Access to Governance Institutions and Public Service Delivery Relative influence of citizenship rights in accessing public services Although formal citizenship has enabled the Plantation Community to enjoy quite a few social rights, considerable socio– economic disparities, owing to lack of access to governance institutions and public services, still persist. This community therefore, is likely to perceive citizenship as a nominal entitlement, since it has not improved their subjective human and social wellbeing much, such as education, health, housing, employment and other basic services. The analysis of evidence shows that access to governance structures and their services remain a major grievance of this community. Table 1 compares the social development of the Plantation Community along with national-level indicators. The table above indicates the degree to which public services penetrate into the plantation sector and the level of disparity. This explains that the legal form of citizenship seems to only be a symbolic equality or formal equality, which is unlikely to generate sufficient courses for equity and justice, where individuals of a particular ethnic group are found in unequal circumstances in terms of rights, entitlements, resources and services. In fact, symbolic equality is unlikely to allow deprived people to realise the substantive meaning of equality, which is about empowering capacity and opportunities of underprivileged groups, ensuring that citizens are given resources necessary to decide what they want, and ensuring equal chances. In the late 1980s, due to constant demand, pressure, and resistance, the Sri Lankan government made some efforts to improve the social rights of this community by giving citizenship 29