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...
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