http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEO20080324033335&Page=O&Title=Thiruvananthapuram&Topic=0
Tamil plantation workers denied caste certificates Monday March 24 2008 13:55 IST R. Ayyappan T'PURAM: Hundreds of Tamil families, descendants of those who had sought refuge in the tea and rubber plantations in the Aryankavu-Thenmala belt on the western fringe of Kollam district during the pre-Independence era, are being denied caste certificate for the last two years and are, thus, shut out of education, jobs and land and housing schemes for the poor. To get a certificate, they are now being asked to produce documents to show that their ancestors had settled in the state before 1950. But the plantations, the only places where such records could be found, have lost them. P M Balaiah, 72, a Tamil plantation labourer who belongs to the Pallan caste, is the former president of Aryankavu panchayat. He won as the CPM candidate in 1995 from Venchira, a ward reserved for scheduled castes. When his daughter, married and landless, went to renew her caste certificate she was told to produce proof of pre-1950 status. Balaiah knocked at the doors of the estate where he had worked, but drew a blank. "We were part of the estate much before Independence and after Independence its ownership had passed through at least four hands. So it is only natural that these documents get lost. Even government departments won't have records that date back to over 10 years," the former panchayat president said. This is the case with all the four major estates in the region, two run by Harrissons Malayalam and two by Travancore Rubber and Tea Company. If an estate has been closed down, like Priya Estate in Thenmala, its former workers will not have even a door to knock at. Since Baliah's daughter could not produce the proof, on her caste certificate was stamped `Hindu Pallan of Tamil Nadu'. "They say `Hindu Pallan of Tamil Nadu' does not come under SC and so we are not entitled to SC benefits," said N Jayaraj, a DYFI worker in the area. Balaiah's daughter was denied the three cents of free land the Aryankavu panchayat is offering as part of a rehabilitation scheme for landless plantation workers. Jayaraj, too, is in trouble. He had written a PSC examination after receiving an SC certificate in 2005. Now that he is unable to renew his SC status, he fears that he might have to compete for a job with those in the general category. "Things have become so severe that Tamil children are denied scholarships and other benefits in school," Aryankavu panchayat president Mambazhathara Salim said. Over 70 percent of the population in the Aryankavu-Thenmala belt are Tamil workers. The revenue authorities are going by a 1986 government order (GO) that had laid down the guidelines for the issuance of SC/ST certificates. There is a reason why a twodecade old GO was brought down so heavily on the Tamil workers only two years ago. It was then that the KIRTADS reported that Pallans, the most dominant group among the plantation workers, were not endemic to Kollam district. Now, other Tamil SC groups like Parayan, Chaklian, Vannar and Nadar are also given the same treatment. Pramod, the development standing committee chairman of Aryankavu panchayat, disagrees with the KIRTADS. "At least 99 percent of the Tamil families have ancestors who had settled in the estates here before 1950. I say this because the estates, right from the time of Europeans, follow a closed recruitment policy. Only the dependants of the workers get a job in the estates," he said.
