Articles by Ramesh Jaura


WEST GERMANY Youth in Revolt?
Ramesh Jaura A SPECTRE is haunting West Germany: the spectre of a renewed student and youth revolt which might have more threatening dimensions than the similar protest wave which enveloped western Europe in the 1960s, For months, the campus scene in different parts of West Germany has been witnessing sporadic unrest boycotts of classes. Significantly, stit- manifest in protest demonstrations and dents from the science faculties too have been joining these protests and boycotts. Even though the issues prompting such strikes have been everywhere different, there are still three common points to all these agitations: the general fear of having to do without jobs (the unemployment figure has been hovering around the one- million mark); a return to rigid laws which would undo even the little democratisation which followed in the wake of educational reform at the end of the 1960s; and a steady dismantling of democratic freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution, under the pretext of combating enemies of the State.

including, its state secretary Homi Daji who contested from Indore, lost their security deposits.
The one and only issue during the elections was the Emergency, and its excesses, especially the compulsory sterilisation programme. According to official figures the target of sterilisation operations (267,000) was exceeded by almost three times in only one- third of the period set for it. It is difficult to believe that this would have been achieved only through persuasion and without considerable pressure. An equally sensitive issue was the indiscriminate use of MISA. Madhya Pradesh, generally regarded as a peaceful backward state, had the dubious distinction of having the largest number of political arrests made during the Emergency. At one stage, about 17,000 persons were in jails which could accommodate only about 7,000. The way the administration dragged its feet on the question of release of detenus

WEST GERMANY Generals' Affair Ramesh Jaura HARDLY four weeks after the general elections, West Germany finds itself in the midst of a controversy over the so-called "Generals' Affair" which has caused a fresh divide in the nation, with the CDU and CSU opposition on the side of the suspended generals and the SPD-FDP government trying to project a picture of unity by backing the decision of defence minister George Leber to suspend them from the services.

September 4, 1976 WEST GERMANY Eastern Policy and Elections Ramesh Jaura AS in 1971, the Eastern Policy of the socialist-liberal coalition government in West Germany threatens to become a hot electoral issue for the coming general elections on October 3. Even West Berlin which, at least since the signing of the four-power agreement and the transit treaties, had ceased to hit the headlines, shows signs of once again becoming an issue endangering detente in Europe which over a year ago appeared to have been achieved in Helsinki. This is indicated by a series of incidents on the borders between the two German states, climaxed by East Berlin's refusal to allow 14 of the 30 uses carrying West Germans to pass rough the GDR territory to reach West Berlin. Passengers of the 14 buses had been mobilised by the youth-wing of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) to demonstrate in West Berlin on the fifteenth anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. The demonstration addressed by the CDU general secretary, Kurt Biedenkopf, took place at the Reichstag building

wide range and variety of military hardware. For instance, Pretoria does not produce jet fighters, but it manufactures Atlas transport aircraft. The country seems keen to exchange these aircraft for Israeli ICFR jet fighters and also tanks. Under the long standing ,collaboration in nuclear research, South Africa offers Tel Aviv enriched uranium in return for counter insurgency equipment. Eventually South Africa will try to seek Israeli know- how in the manufacture of nuclear bombs. Sufficient documentary evidence is also there to show that Israel is a transit station for South African nuclear scientists going to West Germany for training. Some stolen documents, which ended up in the hands of the African National Congress of South Africa, clearly show that West Germany has been secretly co-operating with Pretoria in developing nuclear rower for both peaceful purposes and for making bombs.