What was going on when I was born?

The Polish Parliament passed laws today to make factories and other enterprises more autonomous and to give workers mor e power in running them. The legislation, if put into effect, would move Poland away from the orthodox Soviet model of a tightly controlled, centrally planned economy, as liberal economists here have long advocated. Poland is adopting the more experimental systems of Hungary and Yugoslavia, which have a high degree of workers' participation in industry through elected workers' councils. The councils have considerable voice in decisions involving production, investment, profits and even wages.

With encouragement from the Reagan Administration, welfare officials in at least 10 states, including New York and New Jersey, are devising rules that will prod or require welfare recipients to take jobs. A law enacted recently by Congress, at the request of the Administration, gives the states much more latitude than they had before to impose such requirements, and many state officials say that they intend to take advantage of the new opportunity. Starting next Thursday, Oregon will require women on welfare to seek work when their children reach the age of 3, rather than 6, the age specified in the previous law. West Virginia is developing a program that would require some welfare recipients to ''work off'' their welfare grants by taking jobs that pay the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour.

Stock and bond prices fell sharply yesterday as investors expressed disappointment with President Reagan's latest economic proposals and concern that his Administration will not be able to bring down interest rates. On the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 11.13 points, to 824.01, its lowest level since the recession in the spring of 1980, and the American Stock Exchange's key index suffered its second-largest decline on record. Prices fell quickly when the market opened, reflecting concern that President Reagan's proposals Thursday night will fail to keep the Federal budget deficit within bounds. The markets also reacted to a new forecast from Joseph Granville, a well-known investment adviser whose sometimes dramatic predictions have affected stock prices in the past. Predicts Big Drop Monday Mr. Granville said in an interview in Paris that stock prices would plunge in New York on Monday. In the credit markets, the return on long-term Government bonds rose to a record level, exceeding 15 percent, as prices, which move inversely to yields, plunged. Short-term interest rates rose, too. (Page 29.)

Mexico's governing party today chose Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, a political moderate who serves as Planning and Budget Minister, as its candidate to succeed President Jose Lopez Portillo in December 1982. Although general elections will be held next year, the announcement was equivalent to the naming of Mexico's next leadersince the Institutional Revolutionary Party's nominee has won every presidential election for the past 52 years. Following tradition, the actual selection of Mr. de la Madrid, a 46-year-old lawyer who speaks good English and holds a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University, was made by the incumbent President, and was reportedly communicated privately to the party yesterday. Under the Mexican Constitution, a President cannot seek a second term.

As autumn chills the air, there is comfort in the outlook for home heating oil. Prices are expected to climb no more than 5 cents a gallon this winter, and supplies seem plentiful. This re latively modest price increase would stand in sharp contrastto last year's price jump of about 25 cents a gallon. Over the past two years, the price of heating oil has risen 44 cents.

President Reagan said today that he had withdrawn his Administration's recent proposal for reduced food and nutrition standards in the school lunch program. He suggested that it might have been advanced in the Agriculture Department as a form of ''bureaucratic sabotage'' by opponents of budget cuts in the school lunch program. But a spokesman said later that, upon investigation, Mr. Reagan had agreed that the nutrition proposals were a ''legitimate attempt'' to meet budget restrictions. At the same time, Mr. Reagan and other Administration officials vowed to continue to tighten what they said were loose eligibility standards in a range of Government benefit programs as part of the Administration's budget-cutting drive. Programs Held Abused ''There are programs that are being abused by people, who through technicalities and loopholes in the structure of the program are getting benefits they are not entitled to,'' Mr. Reagan said.

Saudi Arabia has told the United States that it cannot not agree to joint control of Awacs planes into the 1990's, although it is willing to permit United States training personnel to fly on all missions for three or four years once the planes are delivered in 1985 and 1986, authoritative sources said today. The sources said the Saudis therefore seemed unlikely to accept a complex compromise that would assign some American personnel to all crews that monitor and manipulate radar surveillance and combatcontrol consoles on the Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System planes. Reagan Criticizes Senators Such crew assignments had been suggested as a means of allaying the misgivings of some members of Congress about the sale of the planes to the Saudis. President Reagan today strongly criticized senators who oppose or are leaning against approval of the $8.5 billion sale of Awacs and other air combat equipment to the Saudis.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned the people of Iran today that a low turnout for the presidential elections next Friday would be a defeat for the fundamentalist Islamic Government. Apparently in an attempt to counter opposition appeals for a boycott of the elections, he said in a message broadcast by the Teheran radio, ''The prestige of the Islamic republic depends on your participation.'' The 81-year-old revolutionary leader underlined his concern over the situation by calling on clergymen around the country to deliver that message to the people. He also warned that opponents of his rule might be planning to disrupt the elections, for which five candidates have been approved by the 12-member Council of Guardians.

A few of the Jewish guerrillas who blew up the King David Hotel in 1946 came back to the King David yesterday evening - this time to sip champagne, reminisce and mix their pride and sorrow at the events of 35 years ago. Even now, in middle age, they had a stony toughness in their eyes. The man who set the fuses was there. The woman who made three futile telephone calls of warning was there. The man who brought the explosives into Jerusalem, the man who guarded a key corridor, the man who was drinking quietly in the bar, were there. But their commander, Menachem Begin, now Prime Minister of Israel, did not attend. He had been invited and had apparently vacillated all week, and finally did not appear.

The Sunday Times will not publish this weekend as a result of a new labor dispute that shattered a fragile, sevenmonth-old peace. Times Newspapers Ltd., purchased in February by Rupert Murdoch, tonight halted all salary payments to Sunday Times staff members after the National Graphical Association, a printers' union, refused to promise not to interfere with production tomorrow. ''It could have been avoided if we had been given a simple assurance from the N.G.A. that their members would carry out work they were paid to do and not interfere,'' Gerald Long, managing director of the company, said in a telephone interview. ''We had no choice but to suspend publication if we could not produce a paper.''

The private meetings and informal discussions that are being held among the 121 foreign ministers and 10 heads of government gathered here for the General Asembly session are where most of the real work is going on. Once a year, during the two-week general debate that marks the opening of the General Assembly, the foreign ministers, and occasionally a head of state, of the 156 member countries come to New York. They come nominally to present the views of their governments but more practically to confer with each other on an array of issues.

Senator Alan Cranston, the assistant minority leader, said today that Pakistan had begun to use domestically produced fuel in its nuclear reactor near Karachi, a development expected to complicate the Reagan Administration's proposed $3.2 billion aid program for Pakistan. Mr. Cranston said Sigvard Eklund, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear installations, expressed concern about Pakistan's program in a private meeting with his board last week, warning that use of indigenous fuel in Pakistan and in a similar reactor in India would make effective surveillance ''impossible.'' One Administration official, however, said the agency had ''not determined that any safeguard violations have occurred in Pakistan or that any nuclear material has been diverted.'' Pakistan agreed to inspections in 1971.