Tamil youth fed up with Upcountry leadership
A revolt is brewing against Upcountry Tamil leadership. There are signs of revolt in the upcountry. The new generation of educated Tamil youths is losing faith in the existing political and trade union leadership.
“They are not doing anything to uplift the plantation Tamils,” a group of youths told me last week. “Most of them are self-seeking alcoholics,” they said. The Virakesari Illustrated Weekly, Sri Lanka’s premier Tamil publication, which had been relentlessly campaigning for the uplift of the Upcountry Tamils, gave an indication of the growing disquiet in its editorial on Sunday.
The paper appealed to the Upcountry Tamils to “come forward and choose a good political and trade union leadership.”
The revolt is not against any section of the leadership. It is against the ‘entire pack of leaders’, as one youth told me. “We are fed up with the entire trade union and political leadership,” he said.
The Virakesari editorial said the disenchantment is against, “The hereditary leadership, the new leadership, the alternate leadership and the mushroom leadership…”
The general feeling among the people is that all these groups are corrupt, selfish and lack vision and dedication. They feel that the current set up had bred a group of new rich, a tribe of sycophants.
Plight
The youths say the plight of the one million strong Upcountry Tamils, the descendants of those who were brought by the British from South India, mainly Tamil Nadu, is deteriorating every year, and the leadership had failed to arrest it. They add that since 70 percent of the Upcountry Tamils live and work in the tea and rubber plantations, the improvement of the plight of these workers is crucial for the betterment of the Upcountry community.
They are particularly worried about the state of their housing. The British provided them with ‘line rooms’. They were built in groups of 24 rooms, each 12 feet by 10 feet with only one window. They were roofed with tin sheets of asbestos. They are dirty, unhealthy and congested. They are provided with common toilets and common taps.
One youth said, “Sir! You would have seen them on the TV.” The state of the line rooms are regularly shown in TV programmes. He said with intense feeling, “We are ashamed to live in them.”
I interviewed Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) Leader S. Thondaman for the Daily News soon after he took oaths as the Minister of Rural Industries in 1978 in the J.R. Jayewardene government. He told me that his priority would be the housing and education in the plantation areas. Thondaman succeeded in getting the government to take over the estate schools and improve them. The results of those efforts are felt today: the revolting youths are products of that effort. But his efforts to improve the conditions of the houses yielded little result. His proposal to convert the line rooms into single line rooms with either front verandahs only or single line rooms with front and rear verandahs, failed to get the support of the government. Even now over 70 percent of the upcountry Tamils live in the old line rooms in which their forefathers were settled. Only 28 percent of them live in single family houses.
Backward
Thirty-one years after Thondaman joined the government the Upcountry Tamils are still classified the most backward community in Sri Lanka. Their living conditions are bad and the infrastructure facilities- roads and availability of safe drinking water- are appalling. In literacy rates and education attainment they lag behind the rest of the population. The provision of health service is poor when compared to the rest of the country. Half the estate mothers are malnourished. Thus 21 percent of their babies have low birth weight and 44 percent of the pre-school children are undernourished. The incidence of poverty, according to a survey done in 2002, is 7 percent higher than the national average; 30 percent against 22.7 percent. The survey also showed that between 1990 and 2002 poverty declined in the national level, rural and urban, while it showed 10 percent increase in the estate sector.
This situation prevails despite the community having two cabinet ministers and eight deputy ministers. One of the ministries is named ‘The Ministry of Community Development and Social Inequity Eradication.’ A look at its ‘Development Plan’ for the years 2007- 2009 will convince anyone that its efforts are insufficient. I am not blaming the minister or his ministry. I blame the minister for not getting the necessary finance.
The new generation is naturally indignant. They ask, “Is this not an indictment against the current leadership?
One of the excuses given by the present leadership for the deteriorating state of the living conditions of the Upcountry Tamils is excessive consumption of alcohol. The natural question then is what action the political and trade union leadership is taking to curb that evil.
A similar question was asked from one of the CWC leader Ramiah Yogarajan in a recent interview. He admitted the prevalence of that habit. He said alcohol use contributes to the rise of poverty in the plantation sector. He added that some spend between 30 percent and 40 percent of their income on liquor.
He said, “It has recently been observed that women are also starting to drink in excess: men coax their wives to drink to break any opposition to their habit. It’s difficult for a union to fight against these traditions, but we intend to continue with our programmes to raise awareness.”
The question the new generation ask is: How can the present leadership correct the drinkers when they themselves drink? They accuse the leaders of setting bad example for the entire community. They also accuse the leaders including those professing to be the alternate leaders, of distributing alcohol during the recently held Central Provincial Council elections.
The present leaders are incorrigible. The new generation has to take over the leadership of the Upcountry Tamils. And as Virakesari said, the new leadership should have a vision.
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