Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka plantation areas tend to employ a variety of strategies to meet their needs, including working around a system that is apparently unjust and unfair and unethical practices to access public services where equal access, impartiality, and fairness in service delivery become completely futile and lead to various forms of indifferent treatment and restrictions in enjoying public services. Interestingly, it was found that there are psychological impacts in connection with accessing public institutions in this community. During the FGDs, it was reported that humiliation, intimidation, and insults have significant effects on the extent to which people utilise public services at all. Negotiating service delivery through corruption, bribery and rude treatment are endemic in public institutions which leave the people of the plantations feeling powerless, voiceless, and marginalised in governance and service delivery mechanism to which they are entitled as rightful citizens of the country. They are also powerless and voiceless to complain against such acts of public institutions as this may result in losing the required services altogether. It is also worth noting the hurdles and hardships encountered by Plantation Community women in accessing governance institutions and services as rightful citizens of the country. The likelihood of discrimination and ill-treatment remains higher among women than that of men in the plantations. Owing to cultural barriers and deep-rooted inequalities and conventional practices, there is visible discrepancy among women in reaping the benefits of citizenship in full. Male dominated institutional culture and organisational citizenship behaviour continue to remain impediments to enjoy equal citizenship rights. 42

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