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Dr Newton Raj may look like just another doctor catering to patients at a private hospital in suburban Chennai. However, the 27-year-old medical practitioner's life story is a little out of the ordinary. A Lankan Tamil whose family fled the civil war when he was nine years old, Newton lived in a squalid refugee camp in a remote Tamil Nadu village for the next 18 years. Eventually, he broke out of the ghetto, thanks to a government rule which gives children of refugees a shot at higher education.

There are 117 camps in the state to house the 73,000-odd civilians displaced by the conflict be-tween Lankan forces and the separatists, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Staying in a settlement near Kulithalai in Tiruchi which was short of basic amenities like water and electricity, Newton went to a school at Palakurichi near Manapparai. A liberal state policy which created extra seats in professional colleges for Lankan refugees enabled him to gain admission in the government medical college in Tiruchi. 'It was only after I joined college in 2001 and found accommodation in a hostel that I lived outside a camp,' says Newton.
Newton symbolises a lesser-known success story which has been replicated time and again across TN-education has been a passport to success and social integration for myriad refugees who have acquired degrees and diplomas.

For every fleeing Lankan who lives on the margins and gets drawn into a vortex of crime and trafficking, there are those who have defied the rigours of camp life and the limitations of a minuscule dole to make a mark in various academic disciplines, including engineering and medicine.

'No other refugee community in the world has made use of educational opportunities as the Sri Lankan Tamils in India have done,' says Prof V Suryanarayan, a specialist in south Asian studies, who spoke to TOI on the eve of International Refugee Day last week.

I was a bit surprised by your remarks about a person addressed to his mother
Shows the LTTE mentality

I was a bit surprised by your remarks about a person addressed to his mother Shows the LTTE mentality Chennai did the same thing

GOSL must stop displaying dead bodies of LTTE cadres.