Calcutta: "None, not even Allah is on our side," sighed a weary old peasant from Khulna district in East Pakistan, camping with 50,000 others on a paddy field on the edge of the runway of Calcutta airport. Huddled under palm-leaf mats and rags, exposed to torrential monsoon rains, these hungry diseased refugees from Pakistan's east wing have really nothing to look forward to. The West Bengal state government, itself non-too secure, has been thrown completely out of gear by the unprecedented tidal wave of refugees. In the past eight weeks West Bengal has received more refugees (five million) than it has in the past 24 years (4.2 million) since the birth of Pakistan.

In the areas bordering East Pakistan the refugee situation has reached horrifying proportions. In the dirt and squalor of the makeshift camps cholera and gastro-enteritis are taking a frightening toll. The week's estimates put the cholera death count as high as 10,000 with thousands more calmly awaiting death, either from cholera, other diseases, starvation and cold. As the monsoon intensifies, refugees camping on the outskirts of Calcutta already are trying to seek shelter in the city. The consequences could be catastrophic.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who flew into Calcutta last week-end to investigate left baMed and worried. "It is a very grave and serious situation with serious consequences for the nation," she said. "We should not get alarmed, we should sit cool so that we can take the right decision at the right moment." What her decision would be was anybody's guess but Mrs Gandhi made it quite plain that although she did not want to see disintegration of Pakistan she would not tolerate "anything that affects the peace and stability of the country".

Although Mrs Gandhi seems to have met the state Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee's threat that he would resign if the government did not immediately take over the responsibility for the refugees and promise to move as many of them as possible from West Bengal, there is hardly any glimmer of hope either for the refugees or West Bengal. None of the states (except Madhya Pradesh where there are centrally managed refugee camps) seems willing to accept them. And if any do agree, it would take months to move them. In the meantime the shadow of hunger and disease would darken.

Already there is a strong lobby for an incisive military move to end the problem. Quite a number of influential newspapers have questioned the wisdom of spending a staggering amount on refugees while a lesser sum spent on military intervention would solve the problem by creating a favourable situation in East Pakistan for the return of the refugees. India, after all, it is being argued, had to spend only Rs500 million for the 1965 war with Pakistan while it has been spending more than Rs10 million a day on the refugees.

On the morning of Mrs Gandhi's arrival in Calcutta, Ananda Bazar Patrika, the state's most influential Bengali-language daily, frontpaged an open letter to the premier asking her pointblank: "Why can't you send in troops to end the humiliation of humanity, strangulation of democracy, shooting of unarmed people and ravaging of women? Why not war? For fear of huge expenses? Aren't the expenses on account of refugees double the amount needed for war?" Amidst this type of hysteria, the lone voice of moderation was the Statesman which editorially urged New Delhi not to surrender to the "irresponsible demand for strong action".

The man in the street too is getting restive. Already in the border districts sympathy for East Pakistani refugees, particularly among wage labourers and sharecroppers, is fast giving way to contempt, even to hostility. Food prices have shot up and, with the sudden glut in labour market, wages have registered a sharp fall.

The fact that most of the refugees now pouring into India are Hindus adds a further dangerous strain on communal relations. West Bengal has not witnessed any major communal violence since 1964 and the communal parties have not yet turned their attention to the refugee problem. But it may be only a question of time. The arrest recently of two left-wing Moslem leaders - Dr Golam Yazhdani, a former minister of the state's United Front government, and Syed Badruddoza, a former member of parliament - for alleged involvement in a Pakistani spy ring has only helped to further worsen the climate.

The CPM (Communist Party Marxist) -the party to which these two leaders belonged - has lashed out at the state government for "undemocratic" arrest and for "terrorising the Moslems" Whichever way it is viewed, West Bengal is heading towards a crisis of unimaginable proportions.