WORLD HAS NOT KEPT FAITH WITH EAST BENGAL REFUGEES :By Sunanda Datta Ray
THE WESTERN MAIL (Cardiff ) September 24, 1971
As the six-month period set by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the return of the East Bengal refugees draws to an end, India’s harassed relief officials are battling desperately against world indifference and heavy monsoon floods. Five and a half million of the official total of nine million refugees have been cut off from all supplies of food, medicines and clothes. Even the distribution of rapidly vanishing local stocks is becoming almost impossible in the waterlogged terrain. There is desperation in the stench that envelops the refugee camps ; in the helplessness of 800 young doctors and their 2,000 medical assistants who complain that dispensaries are running out of drugs for the two most prevalent diseases, gastropod-enteritis and scabies ; and in the forced reduction of the rice dole from 400 gram-mes to 350 gram-mes. Thousands of skeletal shacks of bamboo are without tarpaulin or polythene covering.
As the six-month period set by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the return of the East Bengal refugees draws to an end, India’s harassed relief officials are battling desperately against world indifference and heavy monsoon floods. Five and a half million of the official total of nine million refugees have been cut off from all supplies of food, medicines and clothes. Even the distribution of rapidly vanishing local stocks is becoming almost impossible in the waterlogged terrain. There is desperation in the stench that envelops the refugee camps ; in the helplessness of 800 young doctors and their 2,000 medical assistants who complain that dispensaries are running out of drugs for the two most prevalent diseases, gastropod-enteritis and scabies ; and in the forced reduction of the rice dole from 400 gram-mes to 350 gram-mes. Thousands of skeletal shacks of bamboo are without tarpaulin or polythene covering.
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