September 1, 1985

IT is one of the quiet, persistent anxieties of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that its most important European member is also the most penetrated by spies from the Warsaw Pact. Lying on Europe's ideological fault line, the Federal Republic of Germany faces not only the massed divisions of the Soviet Union and its allies; in the midst of its open, pluralist society lurk the agents of a formidable espionage establishment run by Germans who happen to be Communists. In the last two weeks, a major spy scandal has abruptly shattered the somnolent end-of-summer atmosphere in Bonn, pushing these quiet anxieties to the forefront of NATO concerns. It started in a low key with the disappearance of two secretaries and a West German army messenger, and then became dramatic and serious with the reported defection to East Berlin of Hans Joachim Tiedge, a senior counterintelligence officer in charge of catching East German spies.

TO audience and critical responses that ranged from cautiously enthusiastic to an unqualified rave, Hugh Wolff, the newly appointed 31-year-old conductor of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, made his official debut Wednesday night at the Garden State Arts Center here. Mr. Wolff and the orchestra attracted a sellout audience for an all-Tchaikovsky program that included the polonaise from ''Eugen Onegin,'' the D major Violin Concerto, with Itzhak Perlman as soloist, and the Symphony No. 4 in F minor. The evening also included a post-concert champagne reception in Mr. Wolff's honor, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and the Midlantic Bank. The concert had been scheduled as a guest appearance long before Mr. Wolff was appointed music director.

When the nationwide celebration that is the Festival of India arrives in the city Sept. 10, it will provide New Yorkers with a wider and more intense exposure to India's cultural history than any but the most privileged Indians could hope for in a lifetime. The festival offerings in New York, which will continue through 1986, begin with seven programs of dance and song at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center and will include an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Indian art dating from the 14th through the 19th century - sculpture, painting, jewels, wall hangings, and a spectacular 17th-century red and gold imperial tent. There will also be concerts of Indian music, with Indian soloists such as the sitarist Ravi Shankar, conducted by Zubin Mehta, at Avery Fisher Hall. The American Museum of Natural History will mount two photographic exhibits, including one on Indian wildlife; the Brooklyn Museum will display 4,000 years of terra cotta art, the Museum of Modern Art will offer 49 classic and contemporary Indian films, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum will exhibit contemporary designs created in cooperation with Indian craftsmen, and the Asia Society will display Kushan sculpture and art from the court of the 16th-century emperor Akbar.

The Northwest River, which supplies drinking water to Chesapeake, Va., contains so much salt from ocean tides that city officials have warned residents with high blood pressure that the water might be hazardous. More than 600 miles north, in the tiny central Maine town of Millinocket, the Great Northern Paper Company has started conserving water in depleted reservoirs by generating power with oil rather than with scarce water. In the fashionable Beacon Hill section of Boston, the water table has fallen so low that 88 town houses' foundations, which are supposed to remain underwater, are exposed to air and have begun to rot. Chance of Drought in 1986 The problem in these and many other areas - from Maine's cracky coast through New York's man-made canyons to the rich plains of the Carolinas - is the same: A yearlong drought has depleted water supplies. Unless this fall is unusually wet and this winter especially snowy, hydrologists warn that the entire Eastern Seaboard faces a severe drought early next year.

More than one million suburban public school students in the New York metropolitan area resume classes this week, with school officials confident that they have reached the end of a long drop in enrollment but unsure about how to handle a number of new issues. These include, for many administrators, a more ethnically mixed student body and parents' demands for programs that are more social than scholarly. The suburban school administrators say they have been affected little by the national debate about the quality of public schools because the vast majority of their students already meet or exceed suggested standards for academic performance. Instead, they said, they are dealing with problems such as what to do for ''latchkey children'' whose working parents are not home to care for them when school ends. Educators on Long Island, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, in southwestern Connecticut and northern New Jersey said parents wanted schools to open earlier in the morning and close later at night. Communities, they said, want the schools to search students for drugs, discipline them for drinking, instruct teen-agers about sexuality and warn younger children against sexual abuse.