Ancient III

The filthy, tattered flotsam of Calcutta's normal beggar population has always shocked the Westerner. Today thousands of refugees are streaming into the city from starving Bengal villages. Men, women & children swarm about hotel garbage cans, clawing hungrily over heaps of offal that spread a sickening pall of stench for blocks; Calcutta's hospitals, with beds for only a small percentage of the city's sick, report a score or more of starvation deaths daily. Private agencies feed 62,000 destitutes each day, cannot keep pace with the influx.

Floods destroyed the Bengal rice crop during the last growing season, but they were merely an addition to India's ancient bag of ills. Provinces with plentiful food supplies are indifferent to the suffering of their neighbors. Rice, at six times its normal price, is far beyond the reach of

India's unwashed. Wealthy Indians cling to hoarded stocks, awaiting even greater profits.

Last week Bengal officials, seeking help in New Delhi, offered a plan for the systematic housing and feeding of the destitute, and a proposal for repatriating refugees to the villages. Others eyed the Japanese looting of Burmese rice stocks and hoped for a more permanent solution: the reconquest of Burma.

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