June 23, 2025
The blog examines challenges faced by Malayaha Tamil communities in Sri Lanka’s tea estates, particularly regarding access to healthcare, childcare, housing, and essential services.
The first sound you hear is a horn – long, low, and unapologetic. It pierces the mist in the early morning as if announcing a ritual. “That’s for the workers,” explains a young woman in an estate in Nuwara Eliya. “6 AM to wake up, 7:30 to start walking, 8 AM you must be in the field.” That horn doesn’t just signal time – it governs life.
In the hill country of Sri Lanka, where the scent of tea leaves mingles with cold air, the Malayaha Tamil communities have lived for generations. They are not merely residents of estates; they are shaped by them. This blog is drawn from fieldwork conducted in April 2025 across four such estates in Nuwara Eliya and Kandy Districts. What began as a study on healthcare access quickly unraveled into something more complex – something more embodied, more structural, and deeply historical.
“We survive. That’s all. But survival shouldn’t be the only option.”
(Community Leader, Estate in Kandy)
“The Doctor Comes. Sometimes.”
At first, you might be told that healthcare is “available.” There are MOH visits, midwife checkups, dispensaries with free medicine. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find that access is something entirely different.
“The midwife comes, yes – but to a center in the middle division. We’re in the upper line. You get told that morning. If you want to go, both husband and wife lose a day’s wage. That’s a lot for us.” (Mother, Estate in Nuwara Eliya)
Doctors don’t stay. Midwives are shared between multiple estates. “Our midwife was pregnant the whole year,” a CSO officer says dryly, “and no one replaced her.” Language, too, becomes a barrier. Many staff don’t speak Tamil, so people resort to gestures, half-understood instructions, or silence.
There’s a dispensary, yes. But only if you’re officially an estate worker. If you’re not?
“They check the list. If your name’s not there, you pay. But most people here aren’t workers anymore – just residents.” (Community Advocate, Estate in Nuwara Eliya).
The “doctor” is usually an Estate Medical Assistant – trained in pharmacy, not medicine. In one estate, an EMA who was also someone’s brother had started selling medicine privately. “Everyone knows,” shrugged a community officer, “even the manager.”
The state appears, flickers, and disappears. What remains is a patchwork of informal care, mistrust, and self-reliance. And so, people fall back on the old ways.
“We use kasaaya, herbal oils, sometimes even black magic. These aren’t doctors, just people who know what our elders knew. Some recover.” (CSO Worker, Nuwara Eliya)
This is not romantic nostalgia. It’s the quiet desperation of a people who have learned that official systems do not always come when called.
One of the estate’s proudest features is the ‘crèche’ – a place where children of workers are cared for while their mothers are in the field. At first glance, it seems like a solution. But much like the dispensaries, it is a partial promise.
“They used to have three crèches here. Now, just one. And only for estate workers’ kids.” (Community Member, Estate in Nuwara Eliya)
Inside the crèche, you’ll find one caregiver – sometimes a very young girl – responsible for a dozen or more infants. No training, no stable salary, no guarantee of food.
“They only get paid if children show up. But they still have to be there from 6 AM to 6 PM.” (Community Leader, Estate in Kandy).
Thriposha? Gone. Clean water? Often not. Infants relieving themselves in shared spaces, illnesses spreading in one-room enclosures. Mothers, too, are trapped in impossible routines.
“They breastfeed at 7 AM, then again at 11:30. But they only get one hour to feed, eat, and get back. No one has time to clean themselves. And there’s nowhere to do it anyway.” (CSO Officer, Kandy)
The burden of care isn’t just personal, it’s structural. Plantation discipline doesn’t stop at the factory gate; it penetrates the body, organising time, movement, even emotion (Daniel, 1996). The crèche becomes both a site of protection and quiet harm.
Health doesn’t begin with a hospital. It begins with where the body sleeps, drinks, relieves itself. In the estates, line rooms – 180 square feet for entire families – still dominate.
“All houses are attached. If one person gets a fever, everyone in the line gets it next.” (CSO Officer, Nuwara Eliya)
Shared latrines serve up to 20 families. If you’re not a worker, you might not be allowed to build one at all. Water comes from springs, carried in barrels, shared for bathing, washing, and drinking. And waste? Burnt openly. Flushed down fragile pipes. Buried when shame demands it.
“They burn everything. Sanitary pads too. The smoke comes into the line. Then the kids step on it.” (Advocate, Nuwara Eliya)
Menstruation is cloaked in silence. Reusable cloth pads are dried under bedsheets indoors – never in the sun. Fungus, infections, shame.
“They say men shouldn’t see it. So women hide it. Then get sick.” (Advocate, Estate in Kandy)
This is what Michel Foucault described as biopower – regulating life not just through laws but through habits, stigma, and design. What looks like “choice” is often adaptation to abandonment (cited in Mahees, 2021).
Even when someone decides to seek formal healthcare, another hurdle awaits – the journey.
“Kandy hospital is far. The bus is full. A three-wheeler is 6,000 rupees. We earn 1,200 a day” (Community Member, Kandy).
No buses after 6 PM. Ambulances stop at the bottom of broken roads. Patients are carried. Or left.
“This year, five or six people died because they couldn't be taken to hospital in time.” (CSO Officer, Kandy)
One girl with a fever died en route, her parents having first tried traditional remedies, then scrambling for transport too late. Not because they didn’t care. But because the system didn’t.
This is not just about infrastructure. It’s about who gets to be visible to the state – and who remains a statistic.
What struck me most was not just the lack of services, but the resignation.
“We don’t have time to go to the clinic. We take Panadol and go to work.” (Tea Plucker, Estate in Nuwara Eliya)
Pierre Bourdieu calls this habitus – a set of internalised dispositions shaped by history and struggle (cited in Huang, 2019). Over generations, the estate system has not just organised labour but reshaped people’s sense of possibility. Even those who no longer pluck tea still live by the estate horn. The schedule is embedded in their bodies. As Morrison (2006) writes, this is alienation in its deepest form – not just from work, but from oneself. Health becomes a luxury. Dignity becomes optional.
Here’s the irony: the estates are private land. Estate management falls under Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs), which operate in areas with plantations of 20 or more acres and at least 10 resident laborers (Census, 2012, as cited in Periyasamy, 2018). The RPCs, not the government, control roads, schools, even water pipes. According to Martin (2020), the legal framework allows RPCs to manage even human modifications – homes, gardens, wells.
Local government has no real jurisdiction unless RPCs agree. The 2018 Pradeshiya Sabha amendment allows for development “in consultation with the administrative authority of the relevant estate.” In practice, that means: only with permission.
The state, thus, becomes an absentee landlord. The RPCs, unaccountable managers. And the estate people? Subjects in a land that claims them only when convenient.
“If we die, we die. No one’s watching.” (Elderly Resident, Nuwara Eliya).
Bourdieu (cited in Huang, 2019) reminds us that habitus, though enduring, is not unchangeable. It adapts. So do people. What is needed now is not just policy but political will – systems that see estate residents as citizens, not labour reserves.
Healthcare should not depend on whether your name is on a workers list. Roads should not require permission to be fixed. And lives should not hang between a bus schedule and a bad road. This isn’t just about healthcare. It’s about justice.
The portraits in this blog – of overburdened caregivers, silent suffering, and ghostlike state services – reveal a daily choreography of endurance. These are not isolated incidents; they mirror broader structural patterns also identified in the Sri Lanka Barometer National Public Opinion Survey on Reconciliation 2023. While SLB indicators point to low to moderate access to basic services in the estate sector, with some marginal improvements over time, such metrics can only be fully understood by also exploring lived realities on the ground, where access remains precarious, conditional, and often out of reach.
Take language, for instance. As mentioned in this blog, many health workers cannot communicate with estate residents in Tamil. The SLB data confirms this divide: Sinhala-speaking citizens are significantly more likely to access services in their mother tongue – 1.6 times more likely than Sri Lankan Tamils and 2.8 times more likely than Up-Country Tamils – underscoring how estate communities like the Malayaha Tamils remain underserved, both linguistically and institutionally.
Yet, this exclusion extends beyond language. In the Central Province, where many Malayaha Tamils reside, the most cited reason for reparations according to the SLB Survey 2023 is the loss of communal land and infrastructure – echoing the dispossession that continues to define estate life. And while the state’s presence is faint, its absence has profound effects. According to the SLB, 63.2% of Up-Country Tamils reported political disengagement in 2023, a stark indication of fading civic trust. When asked about sources of group identity, only 5.8% of Up-Country Tamil respondents in the SLB survey identified as “Sri Lankan first”, a lower proportion than among Sinhalese (10.1%), Sri Lankan Tamils (10.9%), and Muslims (14.3%). This may point to a more complex relationship with a state that has yet to fully embrace them.
The estates are not just physical spaces, they are architectures of control, shaped by both colonial legacy and modern neglect. As this blog has shown, the boundaries of health, care, and dignity are drawn not only by law and infrastructure, but by silence, stigma, and the slow erosion of hope.
Yet, as mentioned above, habitus can shift (Bourdieu, cited in Huang, 2019). The structures that have shaped resignation can also be dismantled through recognition, investment, and political will. To truly move from survival to justice, estate communities must be seen - not as historical relics or labor reserves, but as citizens with rights, voices, and futures.
Dignity demands no less!
References
Daniel, E. V. (1996). Charred Lullabies: Anthropology of Violence. Princeton University Press.
Huang, X. (2019). Understanding Bourdieu. Review of European Studies, 45-49.
Mahees, M. (2021). Politics of corona pandemic in Sri Lanka: A sociological analysis. Technium Social Sciences Journal, 20, 867–876. https://www.techniumscience.com
Martin, T. (2020). Estate Workers in Sri Lanka: An Account of the Legal and Policy Framework. ICES.
Morrison, K. (2006). Marx, Durkheim, Weber. Sage.
Periyasamy, N. (2018). Update on the health status of plantation community in Sri Lanka. Journal of the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka, 23(4), 135-143. Retrieved April 1, 2025, from https://jccpsl.sljol.info/articles/10.4038/jccpsl.v23i4.8135
Sri Lanka Barometer (2024). National Public Opinion Survey on Reconciliation 2023. GIZ-SCOPE. Retrieved September 30, 2024, from https://www.srilankabarometer.lk/publications
Malmi Kuruppu is a Sociology graduate from the University of Colombo, currently pursuing her Master's degree in the same field. Her research interests encompass social cohesion and peace, the sociology of media, the sociology of religion, and the sociology of disaster management and climate change. Alongside her studies, she works as a Junior Advisor at GIZ for SCOPE - Dialogue Platforms, following her passion for advocating social change and development in Sri Lanka.
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