Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka local governance. Even with education efforts, some may not feel that the effort required to force this change is worthwhile or even attainable. While a palpable sense of inequality and incomplete citizenship can mobilise people, local government representation is usually not forceful enough to galvanise a movement. Pressure from within the community is critical due to external factors that could easily frustrate these reforms. Many Sinhala leaders are likely to be hesitant to grant greater local power to Upcountry Tamils, since that would diminish the representation of Sinhalas in up-country Pradeshiya Sabhas. Joseph acknowledged that Up-country Tamil leaders have to motivate their constituency carefully, as not to ruffle any feathers among Sinhala leaders: “The other thing is now, if we go straight away for these regional councils or provincial councils, the people will be disturbed, the people in the sense of the majority community leaders. They don’t like to give power to our people. So they don’t want to introduce this federal system or this provincial council system, or regional council system, whatever the power sharing, they are against it. So I thought that at the grassroots level, if you try to bring this local government as a power-sharing unit, then we can have something there”. Furthermore, Pradeshiya Sabhas have limited power and limited funding, and much more local development work is conducted through the Divisional Secretariats, which represent the central government at a local level (Uyangoda 2012, 367). These two administrative units share boundaries, but have vastly different roles in the lives of residents. While Divisional Secretariat officers boast that they are present in citizens’ lives from birth to 8