Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka UPSC NOTE

  Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka According to Census of 2012 in Sri Lanka Sinhalese 74.9%; Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%; Sri Lankan Moors 9.2%;  India...

 

Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka

• According to Census of 2012 in Sri Lanka

• Sinhalese 74.9%; Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%; Sri Lankan Moors 9.2%; 

• Indian Tamil 4.2%; (Mainly tea plantation workers)

• Others 0.5% 

Steps to be taken to address the challenges of the Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka

• To start being seen as distinct and equal Lankans with huge and unique professional expertise making a major, indeed critically important, contribution to their country’s economic well-being.

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• To have their land-based climate-dependent profession protected against the now almost certain threat of adverse and erratic weather conditions. 

• This calls for urgent, in fact, emergency mitigation strategies not just in the interest of plantation labour but also of the plantations themselves, and therefore of Lanka’s economy.

• To have their worksites, work-cycles and work-styles readied to face the real possibility of COVID-19’s variants and other pandemics, especially zoonotically triggered ones.

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• To ensure that this sector is not left vulnerable to policy-related adversities.

• Such as those that were created by the ill-conceived ban on chemical fertilizer some months ago which hit tea estates in the gut, and to make it creatively equipped to respond to the gradual but globally discernible change in tea tastes, away from the current black tea pattern towards green and herbal teas.

• To recognise the Global opportunities and challenge that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is opening for the community.

• Opportunities of AI:

• Helping predict weather.

• Using drones.

• Help making planting, de-weeding and de-infesting near perfect if not zero-defect operations, and with algorithms, transform the future of the plantation sector.

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• Labels can and do misrepresent facts. Traditional methods can fail to see adulteration or to spot ‘spent leaf’ in bags of mixed tea. 

• AI will tell the true from the fake. Algorithms detecting fraud, calibrating flavour through sensor technology and chemometrics are going to transform the industry.

• Challenges of AI: Fear that AI may cut employment on estates.