LAHORE, Pakistan, Dec. 11 —“The Punjab is finished, smashed,” the fur‐hatted industrialist said. “We will be ruled' by Sind and Bengal. Our country has gone to the dogs, I am telling you.”

Moments later he rallied. “This will always be the center of politics, I can assure you,” he insisted. “If any change comes, it will come from Lahore, I will assure you.”

This garden city, capital of the Punjab, the state that has dominated the rest of Pakistan since the country was carved out of India in 1947, has been jolted by the results of this week's national elections.

Not only has the power base of the nation shifted to East Pakistan — which the Punjab and the rest of West Pakistan had dominated since the beginning — but the poor and underprivileged have emerged as a new political force eyeing the properties and possessions of the rich and Middle class.

“Very grim, very grim, honestly,” said an executive of the American Express bank here. “The other day as I drove by, someone said: ‘We'll see you around, you car owners. We'll get your cars.’”

East Pakistanis United

In the election for a national assembly to frame a constitution and return the country, now under martial law, to civilian rule, the more populous East Pakistan 1,000 miles away across India—united behind one party. The Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, popularly called Sheik Mujib, won an absolute majority of the 300 directly elected seats. The Punjab and the rest of West Pakistan elected 82 members of a fast‐rising party that has pledged to distribute land to tenant farmers and nationalize key industries.

To the consternation of political experts, that party, the Pakistan People's party, swept the Punjab although its chief, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, once a Cabinet minister under the former President, Mohammad Ayub Khan, comes from the Province of Sind.

“Just a get‐together of riffraff,” said the American Express banker, himself a Pakistani.

“Riffraff, yes,” agreed his friend visiting from Karachi.

The election victory of Sheik Mujib and the unexpected majority strength that his party will command in the new assembly have forced West Pakistanis to take a new look at their eastern countrymen, who prefer to call themselves Bengalis.

For years the dominance of the Punjabi‐controlled West, which resulted in favored treatment for western industry and the western‐based army, fueled growing resentment in the East. The Sheik formulated the dissatisfaction in six demands for autonomy, especially financial independence, for East Pakistan. Now, for the first time, the Bengalis with their assembly majority have the strength to press their case.

Mixed Feelings in West

West Pakistanis have mixed feelings about the Bengalis and their autonomy sentiments.

It's like one house with two rooms — no one has a right to break off a room, said Abdul Khalif, a student at Islamia College in Karachi. A Karachi taxi driver said, “I don't know much about these things, but we have to remain one nation.” “There are two main opinions,” said a guide at the Mohenjo‐Daro Bronze Age ruins along the Indus River. “Some people say: ‘The hell with them. They're always getting victimized by cyclones and floods and we always have to help them. If they want to go their own way let them. The hell with them.’”

“Other people here say: ‘If we break up we'll just be two small nations. We have to stay together.’”

A noted Pakistani journalist, A. D. Chaudhri, recalled in Lahore a conversation he says he had recently with sources close to the Government who said that it was costing the West Pakistan based central Government the equivalent of $600‐million a year in aid to East Pakistan.

Unity Apparently Favored

If the Bengalis broke away, he said the sources suggested, the Government would save a lot of money.

However the sentiment now in official quarters as well as among the West Pakistani, population clearly seems to favor unity.

While the central Government has been widely accused of having acted sluggishly in aiding the victims of the cyclone and tidal waves of Nov. 12–13 on the Bay of Bengal coast, West Pakistanis deny that they were callous in the face of the catastrophe in the East.

“There were collections of money and clothing, often by poor people going door to door. But you've got to remember this was 1,500 Miles away,” said Tahir Mirza, assistant editor of The Pakistan Times in Lahore. “The people here helped during the floods five months ago. Now there was the cyclone. The people here have their own problems.”