NORTH-Without Organised Direction

NORTH Without Organised Direction STUDENT violence earlier this month rudely .shook the generally compalcent towns of Punjab. A petty, grossly mishandled dispute over cinema concessions in the small commercial town of Moga soon flared up, assuming the form of an ugly youth movement, which had repercussions in the Union Territory of Chandigarh, in Haryana and in Hima- chal Pradesh where the students had for weeks been on the warpath on several counts. Most of the damage wis, however, confined to Punjab; following demonstrations by irate mobs, there was reckless destruction of property, including of cinema houses, railway stations, buses and even some small post offices. As in Delhi recently, there was also frequent hijacking and burning of buses. Of the eight persons killed in the repeated firings by trigger-happy policemen, only three were students