New Delhi: The arrival in India last week of a three-man UN team, headed by Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Charles Mace, has set the stage for the international aid for which India has desperately appealed. The problem is already on the scale of two million- the estimated number of Bengalis who have already fled to West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur. And the flow of refugees continues at probably a minimum rate of 60,000 a day; if Pakistan does not allow relief missions to operate in East Bengal more are bound to come as the food situation there worsens.

Meantime the first major load of relief supplies from British charities arrived in Calcutta; and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) announced that, gravely concerned over the plight of refugee mothers and children, it was providing a similarly large shipment of food and drugs. It also financed a charter flight which left Calcutta last weekend for Agartala carrying milk powder. Most officials believe the chief problem is likely to be transport, particularly to camps in remoter areas where cholera is already a problem.

India has impressed upon the international community that it cannot undertake relief operations single-handed; it has set up medical units, and poured nearly Rs1O million into relief supplies. But more outside help is vital-as

India points out, it could have avoided the burden on it by closing its frontiers. International agencies now seem alive to the scale of the problem and but for unforeseen calamities, it may be possible to avoid famine and widespread pestilence. All the same, the prospects of the refugees' early return home look bleak, and the strain on India's economy will be severe.