KARACHI, Pakistan—Geo graphically a house divided, Pakistan is increasingly be coming so politically as well.

Talk of secession is heard often now in East Pakistan, more than 1,000 miles across India from this hub of industry in West Pakistan. The East Pakistanis charge that the west is largely indifferent to their problems and a major complaint is the slowness of talks on India's plan to divert the waters of the Ganges River.

The talks, which were scheduled to be held by the middle of this month, are now unlikely to take place until well after the Indian general elections scheduled in March.

The dispute centers on the construction by India of the Farakka Dam on the Ganges about 11 miles upstream of the point where the river enters East Pakistan. The dam is due to be completed later this year.

Pakistan contends that when the dam diverts the course of the Ganges into the Hooghly River, which flows past Calcutta, 23 million people in East Pakistan will be adversely affected. Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and inland water transportation in at least a third of the area, the Pakistanis say, will be ruined.

India, however, contends that the waters of the Ganges must be diverted into the Hooghly to save the port of Calcutta, which is threatened by heavy silting.

The meeting that now seems to be delayed was to have discussed the crux of the problem — the exact amount of water that India would be prepared to give Pakistan on a regular basis.

The dispute is just one problem arising from the separation of East and West, Pakistan.

Other problems between the two halves crop up in the fields of transportation, communications, trade and development.

There are only two ways to travel between the two sectors—by fast but costly jets or by ships, which take more than a week to link Karachi in the west with Chittagong in the east as they travel around the southern tip of India.

Even telephone connections are more quickly obtained — with the quality far better — between, for example, Kara chi and London than between Karachi and Dacca, the East Pakistani capital.

The division also limits the mobility of goods and labor since shipping costs be tween the two sectors are prohibitive.

The fact that East Pakistan is less developed economically than West Pakistan may be ascribed, to a certain extent, to the vast distance separating the two. The east has an annual trade deficit between $100‐million and $140‐million with the west.