CALCUTTA, India, Oct. 4—With a reported 30,000 East Pakistani refugees crossing into India daily to join the millions already here, tensions are building in the overcrowded refugee camps and between the refugees and local people.

India's relief operation has been under immense strain for months, ever since people began to flee the Pakistani Government's military action aimed at crushing the Bengali independence movement in East Pakistan. Since the military action began in March, according to the Indians, some nine million have come here; Pakistani officials put the figure much lower.

As the pressure of numbers grows ever greater, the cracks in the relief operation are really beginning to show.

There have been clashes and brief riots in which several refugees have been killed by the police or by local people. Indian officials and newspapers have been playing down the incidents in an effort to cool tensions, but officials acknowledge that the situation is serious and could become explosive.

The severest test may come shortly if food shortages in East Pakistan cause an even greater increase in refugees.

West Bengal, the politically unstable Indian border state that has absorbed the bulk of the refugees, is urgently pressing the central Government to move large numbers of them to other states. The Government has been talking for several months about moving refugees out of the border states, but so far only about 200,000 of the nearly seven million said to be in West Bengal have been transferred.

Not only is dispersal difficult because of limited transportation facilities, but the refugees, virtually all Bengalis, do not want to leave an area where they are culturally and linguistically at home. Other states, moreover, do not want them.

The reasons for the tensions in the border states—West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura—are many. Refugees complain that camp officials are not giving them their full rations. In some camps, refugees charge that officials are illegally selling relief supplies on the black market.

Local Indians, meanwhile, are complaining that they cannot afford to buy the amount of food the refugees are getting free. Refugees and local people clash over the scarce firewood for cooking: fights have also occurred when refugees strip food from orchards.

Refugee pressures have driven some food prices up, while wage rates have dropped, particularly for unskilled field hands, as the refugees have entered the labor market—despite a Government prohibition—and have offered to work for extremely low pay.

Leftist political parties have begun exploiting the discontent of both the refugees and the local people. Some of the clashes have reportedly been fomented by extremists.

Local discontent was increased by the extremely severe monsoon floods in West Bengal this year, which are just beginning to subside. Many refugee camps were inundated, but the flood's impact was much morel widespread, disrupting the lives of millions. Flood victims, many of whose homes were washed away, are protesting because they are getting less relief food than the refugees and because the refugees are also getting shelter and some medical care.

Indian Effort Is Praised

Some Indian officials, though by no means a majority, have asked privately why foreign relief workers are making such a fuss about conditions in the, refugee camp when the local population is nearly as badly off.

Of the approximately 1,000 camps along India's 1,350‐mile border with East Pakistan, the best are no more than tolerable and the worst are muddy sink holes where death has a stronger grip than life.

With the massive refugee influx, conditions were bound to be bad. Foreign diplomats here have praised the Indian relief effort and have expressed doubts that their own countries could have performed as well.

This is no solace to refugees who have to wash their clothes in muddy ditches, walk miles for a few scraps of firewood and drink water fouled by the floods and by generally unsanitary conditions.

Although the cholera epidemic rampant in June has been largely controlled, the death rate is still high from other diseases—malnutrition, dysentery, pneumonia.

No one knows how many refugees have died. The Indian Government is said to issue deliberately low death figures, apparently in the belief that the true figures would reflect badly on its relief program. But unofficial estimates put the toll at least in the tens of thousands. The very old and the very young have been the chief victims.

Foreign relief workers—including doctors and nurses—have been barred from working in all camps except the Salt Lake camp on the edge of Calcutta‐a “demonstration” camp with nearly a quarter of a million refugees. Visiting foreign officials and dignitaries are taken to the Salt Lake camp.

The official reason given for barring the foreigners from all the other camps was that enough local people were avail able for the relief jobs and that the foreigners posed special problems of housing, food and translators. According to reliable sources here, the real reason is that the Government does not want foreigners observing Indian assistance to the guerrillas of the East Pakistani independence movement, many of whom operate from border sanctuaries in India.

The Indians could use every trained relief worker available, foreign or local. Some of the foreigners have had wide experience in Biafra and similar crises. Virtually every camp is short of trained people, particularly doctors.

“The physical condition of the refugees is so grave,” said an Indian doctor at the Salt Lake camp, “that what you really need to save them is more doctors and nurses and facilities than normal—in other words, the highest standard of intensive care.”

100 Trucks Lie Idle

Other flaws as well have appeared in the relief operation. More than 200 new trucks purchased by UNICEF for carrying relief supplies have been lying idle for more than a month on a road in the heart of Calcutta. The Government says that roads have been severed by the floods, making it impossible to deliver the trucks to the border areas. But part of the reason, it is said, was the Government's, failure to plan and arrange for drivers and mechanics before the trucks arrived by ship in Calcutta.

In most camps, the refugees reportedly are not getting the full rations listed by the Government, although this is largely due to supply and transportation problems, aggravated by the floods.

There have been sporadic reports of black‐market activities by camp officials and also of bill‐padding and kickbacks by contractors hired to erect refugee camps. But there has been no evidence of widespread corruption. In fact, foreign observers have been surprised at how little graft has crept into an operation of this magnitude.

Rice Shortage Feared

The greatest strains on the administration may be yet to come. No end to the refugee influx is in sight. Winter will soon be here, and the existing shelter, clothes and blankets are inadequate. Moreover, the three million refugees who have been living outside the camps, with friends and relatives, are beginning to seek admission to the camps in large numbers because their hosts are finding it difficult to support them.

West Bengal officials fear a rice shortage this winter because of flood damage.

The social pressures, too, are critical. Although the people of West Bengal are sympathetic to the East Pakistani independence movement and as a result have shown considerable tolerance to the refugees, the bloom has definitely worn off.

In many border areas, nearly all the schools have been closed and turned into refugee shelters, and the hospitals as well have been turned over almost entirely to refugee care. Local people are growing particularly angry that their children are being denied schooling because of the refugees.

Refugee children are also getting no schooling, except for few classes set up by private charities and conducted by refugee teachers. It is Indian policy not to establish any comprehensive education or work programs for the refugees. The Indian position is that the refugees must return to East Pakistan eventually—even though it is clear that many of them will not—and that such programs would give them a feeling of permanence.

Try to Keep Busy

“A big educational scheme would undermine our whole concept,” said P. N. Luthra, a retired army colonel who supervises the relief program for the central Government from Calcutta. “We want to keep them leaning toward their own homeland.”

Many of the refugees try to keep themselves busy by weaving straw mats and baskets and by making fish traps out of bamboo strips. They then try to sell them to earn a few rupees to buy fruit or clothing or other things they are not receiving in their relief dole.

Some refugee families, to make a little money, put aside part of their rice ration and sell it below the market price.

Still, unproductive idleness pervades most of the refugee camps, and officials know this could mean trouble before long.

“They just can't sit there indefinitely,” said one foreign diplomat. “It's intolerable. Something's got to be done.”