FORTY YEARS AGO

A YEAR OF EMERGENCY

A YEAR OF Emergency has etched a new profile of India, a distinct profile in discipline, dedication and hard work. Agitations, demonstrations, "dharnas", "gheraos'', assault and gunfire had replaced academic pursuits in Indian universities to symptomise a sickness. A malaise that was equally in evidence in the violence and arson indulged in by highly paid bank or insurance employees, factory workers, educated unemployed, even police and in the confrontation between political parties. A year of Emergency has changed all this and more. A great calm has descended on India to silence polemics and bury in its depths the hand of violence that had ravaged the country's contours and threatened it with fragmentation, an assessment by Samachar of one year of Emergency reveals, a report on the front page said.

BATTLE FOR BEIRUT

HEAVILY REINFORCED PHALANGIST troops stormed two Palestinian refugee camps in south-eastern Beirut, but were held off by minefields and fierce leftist counter-attacks.

VIETNAM IS ONE

THE VIETNAMESE NATIONAL Assembly was inaugurated in Hanoi amid North Vietnamese newspaper reports that from now on Vietnam is a "completely unified country". The assembly was opened by a South Vietnamese, Nguyen Huu Tho, Chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Government's of "wise men". Before the opening of 492-member assembly, all deputies paid tributes to the late Ho Chi Minh by laying wreaths at his mausoleum.

FLIGHTS TO KABUL

INDIAN AIRLINES WAS set to resume regular scheduled services to Kabul from July when the India-pakistan agreement on overflights comes into effect. IA flights to the Afghan capital were discontinued in February 1971 when India and Pakistan banned overflights by each other's planes.