Incomplete Citizenship of the Plantation Community: Access to Governance Institutions and Public Service Delivery the data through semi-structured and in-depth interviews, along with eight Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). The language used for preparing and administering the interview guides was English. A professional translator translated the guides into Tamil to facilitate respondents’ understanding. I conducted a pilot study involving 15 respondents to test the validity of the interview guides. For the interviews, I focused on various categories of respondents including plantation workers, non-workers who live in the estates, public officials, plantation management, political leaders, and civil society activists and youth, which helped minimise bias in the process of data collection and analyses. I also conducted FGDs in remote and central locations using different sets of questions, which lasted for one to one and a half hours, where six to ten participants, including plantation workers, civil society activists, teachers, and youth attended the discussion. I also maintained a gender balance in the entire data collection process—28 males and 26 females participated in the interviews and 33 males and 34 females in FGDs. Interview questions helped capture the key aspects of the study, and respondents freely expressed their own views and experiences. Respondents were selected from all ethnic groups based on the relevance, expertise, and availability of information. Thus, 18 Sinhalas and 37 Tamils were interviewed for this study and Sinhala respondents were mainly public officials, plantation managers, civil society activists and politicians, whilst Tamils respondents were estate workers, non-workers, trade union representatives, public servants, local politicians, civil society activists, and NGO workers. The FGDs mainly took place with estate workers, non-workers, youth, and plantation teachers. 27