SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Nov. 3 —Despite the continuing threat of an Indian‐Pakistani war in Kashmir and a series of mid October border clashes that caused alarm and made people flee their homes, surprisingly little tension is noticeable in the villages along the Indian side of the 22‐year‐old ceasefire line in the Kashmir valley.

In these villages, some of them deep in the pine forest barely five miles from the border, people are going about their jobs in a calm, relaxed manner, chatting and laughing in the sun as they always do at harvest time.

Their predominant worry, at the moment, appears to be the acute water shortage caused by a two‐year drought, the worst in 100 years, that has seriously affected food production.

Jammu Area Troubled

The border areas of the Jammu region, where a majority of the population is Hindu, tell a different story. There, as the threat of war increased with the massing of Indian and Pakistani troops along the frontier, more than 3,000 people left their homes in the Chhamb‐Jaurian sector and other vulnerable places to seek shelter elsewhere. Several Kashmir state officials were rushed to the panic‐stricken areas to try to halt migration.

No such migration or evacuation has been reported so far from any of the 185 border villages in the Kashmir valley, whose population of 650,000 is overwhelmingly Moslem.

There seem to be three principal reasons. First, since snow is expected any time now, entry and escape routes along the mountainous cease‐fire line in the valley will be virtually inaccessible. Second, economic benefits tie the people of these border villages to their homes even in times of war. Many work as guides, informers and porters for the Indian security forces. And finally, the Moslem border People feel that no harm will come to them if Moslem Pakistan attacks in this area. Just before the 22‐day war in 1965 thousands of armed Pakistani guerrillas poured into the valley. They battled with Indian troops, but left the people untouched.

“Our main worry is our crops, which might get destroyed in war,” said an elderly farmer, Ghulam Rasool of Kalam Chakia village. “That worry is over with the harvest.”

Although the border population appears vigilant, the authorities are taking no chances, especially with the presence in this state of many who favor the East Pakistani secessionists. Some of them helped the Pakistanis in 1965.

The Kashmir Government has organized 138 vigilance committees to help prevent the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and spies through cease‐fire line routes, including 24 mountain passes at heights between 9,000 and 14,000 feet.

A soldier from the warmer Punjab, on guard duty near the border, said he did not like the freezing cold. “But duty is duty,” he said, shrugging.