The Tamil North-East does not only lose people. It loses the knowledge those people carry. Kilinochchi youth unemployment is the highest in the Northern Province — 20.3%, more than double the Western Province average. Graduates leave because there is no civilian administration to enter. The administration that remains is militarised, undertrained for Tamil-medium service delivery, and structurally hostile to professional return.
All figures: University of Peradeniya. Female youth unemployment "higher by several folds" than male (per source; full paper required for precise figure). Eastern Province not covered.
| District | Youth unemployment |
|---|---|
| Kilinochchi | 20.3% |
| Mannar | 17% |
| Jaffna | 13% |
| Vavuniya | 11.7% |
| Mullaitivu | 11.1% |
| Northern Province (average) | 14.5% |
World Bank baseline: WPS 8355 (2018) · N&E Socio-Economic Assessment (2018). Both pre-date the 2022 economic crisis.
GRI(t) = (N-E-origin graduates currently in N-E civilian administration roles at time t)
/ (total N-E-origin graduates of working age at time t)GRI is an aggregation device, not a TLTE-produced score. The denominator comes from University Grants Commission (UGC) data on N-E-origin graduates. The numerator comes from district secretariat and provincial council establishment lists. The index ranges 0–1; a higher number means more N-E graduates working in N-E civilian administration.
Falsifier: if UGC + district secretariat data show GRI converging to the all-island ratio of graduates-in-public-administration, the graduate-displacement branch of the Vadakkilangai argument is rebutted.
Non-claim: GRI does not predict future migration. It does not name individuals. It does not score districts on a probability scale. It is a publication device for existing UGC and district statistics.
This is a published specification, not a TLTE vacancy list. TLTE neither recruits nor employs. The list answers the question "what would graduate return mean materially?" against the Cloud Civil Administration architecture at /vadakkilangai/cloud-civil-administration.
Stable citation IDs in the tlte-cite: namespace. Each link resolves to a permanent record at docs.tlte.cloud/cite/<slug> with title, publisher, archive URL, and reuse guidance.
tlte-cite:wb-wps8355-2018Tier A World Bank baseline: 'Although Sri Lanka has made significant progress in social and economic development over the past decade, the Northern and Eastern provinces that faced the brunt of the decades-long conflict remain disproportionately poor and face unique economic challenges.' Structural baseline for the Graduate Return Index (GRI) numerator (N-E graduates outside the N-E civilian labour market). 2018 data, pre-2022 economic crisis.
tlte-cite:wb-socio-economic-ne-2018Comprehensive Tier A socio-economic baseline for Northern and Eastern Provinces covering labour, education, poverty, infrastructure — statistical anchor for GRI. Pre-2022 economic crisis; the most recent emigration wave is not reflected.