Incomplete Citizenship of the Plantation Community: Access to Governance Institutions and Public Service Delivery we analyse the general election results since 1994. As a result of this pattern, not only plantation based political parties but other minority parties too became “king-makers” in national politics in the form of constituent partners of successive governments by using their vote base and representations. When we compare the situation of pre- and post-2009 trends, there has been some visible improvement in the social development of this community than that before 2009. Nevertheless, it does not mean that the plantation based political parties and leaders did not have any influence in the national political process before 2009. For instance, in 2004 there were 10 MPs in parliament who represented the Plantation Community—of them, two were cabinet ministers1 and seven had deputy ministerial portfolios including education, health, vocational training, justice, national integration, and postal and estate infrastructure development. Nevertheless, during this period, no huge changes, development or reforms took place in the sphere of governance structures in the plantations. Importantly, serious issues such as housing, land rights, legal discrimination, amending the Pradeshiya Sabha Act, and creating new governance structures (local authorities, divisional secretariat divisions) were not seriously taken into account when compared to the post-2009 context, though several proposals had been submitted time and again. The post-2009 scenario opened up the avenues to put more pressure on social development and governance issues in many 1 Arumugan Thondaman was Minister of Estate Infrastructure Development (Ceylon Workers’ Congress–CWC) and Periyasamy Chandrasekaran was Minister of Community Development (Up-country People’s Front–UPF). 31

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