Calcutta, June 10
In terms of hard pledges, the world has so far promised to give India approximately £30m for the relief of the estimated 5,000,000 refugees who have swarmed across the border during the past two months.

The United Nations is considering India’s request for an immediate grant of $175m (about £73m); planeloads of medicines and vaccines are arriving at Calcutta airport every day; and volunteers from all corners of the world have rushed to the cholera-stricken areas of West Bengal.

But the frightening fact remains that these substantial offers of aid will only ease the problem marginally and for a limited period.

To comprehend the magnitude of the problem, one has only to realize that if every single person in Britain were to contribute one pound to a relief fund, die amount would only keep these millions of displaced persons alive for about five months—and that would be at the minimum rate of a shilling a head per day and it would not include the cost of shelter.

Until now India has been spending about £1m every four days on the 2,500,000 registered refugees congregated in camps and near ration centres. But the number has almost doubled during the past three weeks and the Government has already revised its $175m request to the United Nations. As an estimated 100,000 new refugees cross the border every 24 hours, it says that the amount will have to increase by 5 per cent each day.

Even the seasoned relief agency volunteers from Biafra are dumb-founded by the enormity of the disaster. Most of these uprooted people possess nothing but the clothes on their backs.

The costs are prohibitive and it is doubtful if the Indian economy which is already running down under a deficit budget, can stand the strain for long.

The Government estimates that nearly 5,300,000 refugees have crossed the border so far and although the numbers registered in official camps have now risen to perhaps 3,000,000, the remaining 2,300,000 men, women and children; who are living on the roadside, will have to be helped quickly if they are to be saved. And this will mean that India will have to allocate £30m every-month to keep them alive in bearable conditions.

“But we just can’t keep pace with the daily influx. We never expected this to continue and all of our planning has been thrown out of gear ’’ a harassed official says. He explains that the Government is still attempting to disperse the first batch of 50,000 refugees to camps on high ground in other states.

The problem is overwhelming and frightening. In the first, place, the millions of refugees housed in many of the huge communal camps will have to be moved to high land before the monsoon rains flood the low-lying areas of West Bengal. Many camps have already been flooded out by the first monsoon rains and their occupants have joined the million of homeless people sheltering under doorways, trees and rocks in almost every village and town near the 1,300 mile-long border.

However, there is not enough high land in West Bengal to accommodate the growing number of large camps and the Government is now attempting to disperse the refugees to the other states for the monsoon season.

But here the tragedy deepens. At best the Government can run seven large refugee trains out of Bengal every day and at this rate would take about four months to move a million people. It would seem inevitable then, that millions of people must spend, the next few months in mud and slush without adequate shelter.

The plans for dispersal have also been retarded by another problem. “We can't dump these people in the wilderness in other states without being sure that water will be available near the camp sites. So we have to start prospecting for water and sink tube wells before we move them and that’s going to take time”, an Indian official explains.

The administration in West Bengal has been all but paralyzed by the refugee problem and the Government has now decided to set up a parallel administrative service for the refugees.