equal India's 550 million.” Indeed, next to India, the Soviet Union appeared likely to be the big winner in the battle for Hast Bengal. In fact, some people were predicting that Moscow would parley its support for India into vastly increased influence on the subcontinent and all around the Indian Ocean. But while the Russians have plainly enhanced their standing in the area, that assessment seemed a bit overdrawn. For throughout the current crisis, Mrs. Gandhi has resolutely steered her own courseneither asking for nor accepting direction from any quarter. And with India riding high, there seemed to be little reason to suspect that the headstrong Prime Minister was about to begin listening to outsiders now.
No place Worse Than Home
These days, the telephone in P.N. Luthra's modest, third floor flat in Calcutta starts jangling at 6 each morning. And with the first ring Luthra, a 54 year old retired army Colonel who is responsible for coordinating India's relief program for Bengali refugees, is jolted awake by one of the seemingly endless scries of problems that confront him daily. The first caller on a recent morning informed him that the Indian territory of Tripura, abuting East Pakistan's Comilla district, had received only 45 freight-car loads of food the previous day instead of its normal allotment of 67. Rushing to his makeshift office in the Calcutta branch of the Labour Ministry. Luthra ordered food stocks diverted from “a little reserve I have managed to build up in Assam.” But when an aide found the phone connections to Assam so bad that he could not make himself understood, a telegraphed order had to be sent instead. “It will take 24 hours to get there,” Luthra muttered helplessly. “I won't even receive confirmation for another 48 hours."
And so the problems mounted through the day. According to Indian Government figures, 9.8 million Bengali refugees have already fled to India and some 12,000 more stagger across the 1,300-mile long East Pakistani border every day. Among other things, they create a mind-boggling logistical puzzle for Luthra and his 280-man staff. With the onset of winter, some 4 million blankets must be distributed immediately in the colder districts near the Himalayan foothills, but fewer than a half million have arrived from abroad. Another 5.0(K) wells for drinking water have to be drilled in West Bengal to supplement the 6.000 already sunk. Concerned with reports that perhaps 30 per cent of the drug supplies and 15 per cent of the foodstuffs earmarked for the refugees vanish before reaching the 1.000 camps India now maintains, Luthra recently decreed: “We must lighten security.” But and aide disagreed “The more we tighten up,” he argued, “the more bottlenecks we'll have. Speed is more important now than trying to prevent the inevitable pilfering that goes on."
Yeoman Service
In fact, for all the snarls, the Indian relief workers have performed yeoman service. At the sprawling Salt Lake camp near Calcutta's Dum Dum Airport, a new hospital staffed by sixteen doctors has helped to drastically cut the death rate among the camp's estimated 50.000 children to an average of only three at day. In addition the children at the camp now attend an open-air school under the direction of 110 teachers who are themselves refugees from East Pakistan. Salt Lake's population consumes some 200
