Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka some segments of society who deserve public services but lack power and informal relationships. The differential impact of public institutions in the lives of the Plantation Community is not always apparent. They are invisible, but deeply entrenched in various forms. Interestingly, though the Plantation Community have bitter experience and negative perception and receive a small portion of government services, they are more likely to join those programmes—even if it was not what they want—because they have a feeling that something is better than nothing and such programmes could help them in some way. Access to governance institutions As this chapter indicates, there has been a significant variation between policies and practices or implementation, which has led to undesirable outcomes in service delivery at the local level. In 1987 and 1988, some provisions were made to recognise Tamil as an official language through the 13th and 16th amendments to the present Constitution, which not only recognised Tamil as an “Official Language” but also affirmed it as a language of administration. Along with these constitutional amendments, the Official Languages Commission Act (No. 18) of 1991 and several government directives, gazette notifications, and circulars came into force to implement Tamil language provisions in public administration. These arrangements have not been adequately implemented in plantation areas compared to the northern and eastern parts of the country, and officials and institutions are less likely to follow these Acts and circulars in full. Indeed, Tamil has been an official language since 1987, with legal guarantees for Tamil-speaking minorities to have access to public services and to conduct government business in their language. Nevertheless, 36