TRANSCRIPT: (SEQ. 10): REPORTER: We don't know what the end will be, there'll have to be some kind of solution. These people can't stay in India for ever. But how they'll be able to return to their homes without some serious upheaval first, that nobody can say.




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Background: Refugees from East Pakistan are still pouring across the border into India. According to official Indian estimates they number 10,000 a day and they're becoming an intolerable strain on the country's economy. In all a reported four million have crossed the border - double the estimate of three weeks ago.

B.B.C correspondent Anthony Lawrence, reporting on the refugee situation, says there's extensive malnutrition, and disease is spreading.

News agency reports say at least 800 people have died from cholera in the camps, in five days.

SYNOPSIS: The camps are strung along the roads, They've all got problems. Epidemics are the great nightmare. Chloride of lime kills bacteria but some of the refugees have brought cholera and other diseases with them and they're spreading. Hundreds of cholera cases have been reported. Many have died.

In this hospital they make up a temporary wing with mat walls. Seventy cholera cases are admitted here every day. Seven die. Then of course the wounded. People who were shot at before they reached the border. These are the lucky ones. They did at least make it. This young woman says her husband was killed. Some were suffering from malnutrition before they came. They can't survive the long journey on foot.

This man gets taken to hospital, but he far gone. His chance of survival is small. Always more people. Four million of them already. Some say they frightened of being killed by the Pakistan Army, that's why they've fled from East Pakistan to live in camps like this.

The latest arrivals, a quarter of a million in a few days, are Hindus who say they are being terrorised by the Muslims backed by the Pakistan troops. Anyway, they're on the run.

They're even camping now at the end of the runway to Calcutta airport about ten miles north of the city. Now they're sinking wells for water to drink. but in a few days from now there'll be too much water. The heavy monsoon rains will have started. This place will be flooded. You keep asking yourself what are these people doing here. Why do they leave their villages with little hope of every going back. They're the victims of a political struggle. East Pakistan wanting self government and the central government troops coming in to crush it. And an uprooting of millions.