There are some refugee issue that have more or less solved themselves through sheer passage of time. indu, Muslim and Sikh refugees created by Partition have had to come to terms with their displacement. Refugees who fled Burma in the 1960s to India and Nepal have likewise become reconciled with their new situations, and this is true also of the Indian Tamil repatriates. The Tibetan refugees, while many still yearn to return to the high plateau, are well settled and economically secure.
However, there are millions of South Asians who have crossed frontiers whose presence is problematic to host countries and can invite instability in their place of refuge. As geographically the largest and most central country of South Asia, India has played host to most refugees and migrants. According to Partha Ghosh, Director of the Indian Council of Social Science Research in New Delhi, post-Partition India has taken in 15 million people migrants from its neighbours. These have come from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, and the number does not include the long-term economic migrants from Nepal.
The most serious problem for the Indian state, doubtless, are the Bangladeshi settlers who have ranged far and wide within India, building up significant enclaves in Bombay and Delhi, and inhabiting large tracts of the Brahmaputra Valley. The 1981 Indian census revealed that in eight border districts of West Bengal, the population grew by over 30 percent between 1971 and 1981, compared to an average 20 percent elsewhere. The population of one northern town leapt from a mere 10,000 to 150,000.
Indian census estimates put the number of Bangladeshis who have migrated to India at 1.7 million between 1961-71 and 0.6 million in the following decade, the latter figure not including another 0.6 million said to have entered Assam during the same period. The government of India claims that 78,441 were intercepted at the border between 1992-1994.