Better Must Come to the most recent Labour Force Surveys, it is the estate sector that has recorded the lowest mean and median household income for the past two years running. 94 It is because many still rely on estate healthcare that is removed from the national health system, estate schools mired in a history of neglect and readily available though poorly remunerated plantation employment, that increased access to government healthcare services, and educational and employment opportunities beyond the estate must be investigated to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has brought with it substantive benefit in the post-2003 era. As stated above, the #IBELONG Campaign tells us that that ‘stateless people want nothing more than to come in from the cold — to belong’. 95 Immediately following this statement, we are told that this ‘is often impossible’ 96 because stateless people are ‘politically impotent’ 97 and as such cannot organise to affect change. Exploring whether the acquisition of citizenship has remedied the assumed political impotency of a previously stateless population, and the implications this has for bringing the stateless in from the cold, is reason enough to explore whether Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population do indeed have increased access to the political process in the post-2003 era. However, it is important to remember that prior to Ceylon’s independence from British rule, some 100,000 Up-Country Tamils registered to vote in the 1931 State Council elections, which elected two Up-Country Tamil representatives to the State Council. 98 Five years later, some 145,000 Up-Country Tamil voters returned another two Up-Country Tamil representatives to the State Council. 99 Building on this momentum, in 1939 the Ceylon Indian Congress (later renamed the Ceylon Workers’ Congress) was formed to protect the rights of Indians and those of Indian descent in the country. 100 Unfortunately, this rising chorus of political participation was altogether silenced by the citizenship and elections acts passed in 1948 and 1949, and save the sporadic strike actions undertaken by plantation labourers in the intervening years, Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population remained effectively silenced until the issue of citizenship was resolved. It is precisely because the Up-Country Tamil population constituted a consequential political demographic that was silenced with the enactment of the 1948 Act that increased access to political participation must be investigated to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has brought with it substantive benefit in the post-2003 era. 101 1 Healthcare Overall, the majority of questionnaire survey respondents indicated that access to government healthcare services has improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship, with a near equal representation of women and men again indicating that this was 94 As of 2019. See Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey Annual Report — 2017 (Annual Report 2nd Version, 7 May 2019) 9. 95 UNHCR Special Report (n 3) 16. 96 ibid. 97 ibid. 98 Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47); Lawrence (n 55); Vijayapalan (n 37). 99 ibid. 100 Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). 101 See Questionnaire and Interview Findings. 19