For Sri Lanka, such ambitions hold serious repercussions. The multi-million dollar tea industry that forms the backbone of the country's economy has since the mid-18th century depended on this community, officially categorised as Indian Tamils, to generate the workforce for this labour-intensive sector.

However, that cannot be taken for granted anymore. Though high schools in the region were introduced barely 20 years ago and are still primitive, for an increasing number of students, they have become the departure lounge to the world outside. This, combined with an overall rapidly ageing population, could spell doom for Sri Lankan tea. ``All these years, we have had acaptive labour force to work on these plantations. But five or 10 years from now, we are looking at a serious labour shortage in the tea industry,'' said W W D Modder, director of the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka (TRI).

Even if the plantation child who now dreams of assembling a rocket reaches nowhere near his ambitions, it is almost certain that he will at least leave the estate to work as a car mechanic in the neighbouring town.

There are now an estimated 250,000 children studying in plantation schools as opposed to 80,000 in 1977, most of them aspiring for white collar jobs. The effects could be disastrous for the industry. Tea is Sri Lanka's biggest industry and its primary export. Last year, tea exports alone fetched the country nearly $700 million. With more than 500,000 workers employed on the plantations that cover 194,000 hectares, it is a highly labour-intensive industry.

Pruning, weeding, fertilising, plucking, weighing, loading, drying, packing: each of these and other processes thatgo into the manufacture of tea require a number of human hands. The Sinhalese workforce looks down on that kind of `coolie' work, which is why the British had to bring the labour force for the first tea estates in the country from Tamil Nadu.

Now, younger generations of Indian Tamils also want to escape the stigma associated with estate labour. Low-country plantations, which are less isolated than those in the hills, have already begun to feel the consequences of the new mood. ``It's infra-dig to work in the plantation, but they do not mind doing even a house boy's job in Colombo for less money, because there is no stigma attached to that,'' said Roshan Rajadurai, manager of Pedro, one of the largest tea estates in Sri Lanka, and honorary secretary of the Nuwara Eliya District Planters' Association.

Even those already registered as workers in plantations might not show up for work on the estate if they chance upon any other casual manual work, which has resulted in a high rate of absenteeism on theplantations. Many no-shows may even be found at computer classes.

Irate plantation managements may hit back by asking all those living in houses on the estates and utilising other plantation benefits like medicare, but doing jobs elsewhere, to leave the estate. Scientists at the TRI have also recently developed a machine that aids plucking. The machine needs to be operated by a skilled plucker and used efficiently could bring down the number of pluckers required per hectare.

However, the TRI is emphatic that such measures are only short-term solutions and has been pressing for a `long-term vision', because machines will never effectively replace human beings in the tea gardens. According to Modder, the only way to attract and retain `professional' tea labourers is to make their living and working conditions better than they have been all these years.

``This is really a question of status and dignity. We have to restore the dignity of estate labour so that people want to work in the tea plantations,''said Modder.

His view is shared by some planters. ``We have to convince them they are not coolies any more, we must make them feel like our partners,'' said Rajadurai, who believes even changing the job description from `plucker' to `tea technician' might be helpful. Right now, even though tea estate jobs require a high degree of skill that is handed down only from parents to children, these are the least desired jobs in the country for a number of historical reasons.

Generations of planters and successive governments isolated the plantation workers from the rest of Sri Lanka, as a result of which housing, health, education given to the others bypassed them for many years. Laws decreeing they were not citizens of Sri Lanka and disenfranchising the Indian Tamil community in 1948 only made the situation worse.

Strong trade unions and electoral compulsions created by the nearly 10 lakh-strong community eased the situation a little, but the primitive `line-rooms' that still house a majority of the workersare eloquent evidence of their deprivation in comparison to other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka.

Many estate schools have no mathematics and science teachers, which has led to a belief that the government is conspiring to keep future generations of Indian Tamils captive on the estates. As yet, only 0.04 per cent of the community have managed admission to a university or institute of higher learning.

However, despite the worst suspicions of the workers, plantation companies and scientists at the TRI believe they must be prepared for the time, not long from now, when there might not be enough people to fill the jobs on the estates. And one of the ways being seriously considered by Sri Lanka may finally be to reduce the acreage under tea plantations.