The Indian government has been trying and has finally decided whether the country should have two different time zones. Would the proposed time divisions throw the country into confusion? Who would benefit from this change and who would lose out?
So to understand let’s start from scratch. What’s the deal about having times zones? I tried doing some research on my own and I’ll try to summarize what I found out.
Indian Standard Time (IST) is the time observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time (DST is the practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less.) or other seasonal adjustments, although DST was used briefly during the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971 (Why? We’ll come to that later).
IST was not in practice in the British India, with regions maintaining their own time zones. It wasn’t until Independence that India’s two time zones were unified, while, ironically, the country itself was divided physically.
The country's east-west distance of more than 2,000 km covers over 28 degrees of longitude, resulting in the sun rising and setting almost two hours earlier on India's eastern border than in the Rann of Kutch in the far west. The peculiar problem is that every summer, the residents of our eastern states see the sun rising at 4 a.m. With hours to go before India’s workday begins, people wait in bed for the westward-moving sun to wake up the rest of India. Their forced procrastination has serious consequences. With nearly four hours of daylight wasted, there are big losses to eastern India’s productivity.
The country also loses a critical opportunity to tackle its worsening power crisis — especially the peak-hours power shortage that occurs early morning and late evening. The solution to both problems could lie in another re-partitioning of India — this time into two time zones.
R.K. Pachauri, director-general of The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), estimates that power shortages cost India up to 1.5 per cent of its GDP every year, with peak hour shortage rising to as much as 13.9 per cent. He says“Having two separate time zones will decouple the peak times in different parts of India and even allow for the possibility of transferring power between the states,”. In military and aviation time, IST is designated E* (standing for "Echo-Star"). In wartime daylight saving has been used to reduce civilian energy consumption.
Those who are for this change argue that daylight could be used to better effect if the country was divided by a north-south line into two time zones. But others who are opponents believe that this would cause social and economic problems as well as confusion.
On top of concerns is that having two time zones will disrupt everything from software systems in banking and finance to social and business interactions that may happen across time zones. Banks and Trading Markets would have to be reframed.
Also flights arising from east say from the city of Calcutta coming to Mumbai would practically take double the time to reach destination. Fliers won’t be the only ones affected. Examinations with the same test papers would be held at a delay in both zones but as the rules say that 12 board exams must begin simultanously in all schools across the country to ensure fairness. The voters in the eastern side would be able to declare the winner while voters in western side still stand in lines.
Other uncanny concerns obviously ought to come from the places least expected. Read in todays newspaper: In a series of political rallies, Thackeray repeatedly accused the Congress-NCP led state government of agreeing to the time zones only because it favours Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He can’t bear Bihar being two hours “ahead” of Maharashtra and said that this would represent the superiority of UP and Bihari people over the Marathi people.
That’s not all, behen Mayawati herself is being accused of suggesting to divide the state of UP based on time zones selling out to the upper caste constituencies who would fall in the two hour “ahead” time zone. The MLAs allege that this is a move against the oppressed and backward sections of society and a further attempt to deprive them of development. (what bullshit)
Prime Minister's Office will soon address the nation to alleviate the ongoing confusion but apparently the government seems to be confused over the timing of his speech.
There have been previous attempts to put this in order. In 2001, the government established a four-member committee under the Ministry of Science and Technology to examine the need for multiple time zones and daylight saving. The findings of the committee, which were presented to Parliament in 2004 by the then Minister for Science and Technology, Kapil Sibal ( I don’t under stand why this guy is involved whenever the most degrading of the decisions are made), did not recommend changes to the unified system, stating that "the prime meridian was chosen with reference to a central station, and that the expanse of the Indian State was not large enough."
What took me into thinking is that have all the other matters vanished that every body has gathered to discuss to this all-so-sudden-so-important problem? Well, it has merits and demerits. Though serious issues like energy can be helped but at the same time you can expect a 1/6th of the world’s population to be all clear about the concept itself, can you?
To tackle these problems there have been instruments all along. There are provisions in labour laws that allow the Central and State governments to define and set the local time for a particular industrial area. So a TATA nano plant (now just a thought) in Singur would operate two hours earlier than a nano plant in Pantnagar, Gujrat. So rather than having separate time zones just work in different working hours.
Bangladesh is +6:00 hours ahead of GMT and we are further beyond that. The option that we have is to either opt in for Daylight Saving Time where you (apparently) shift your typical working day by a couple of hours or to have a divided country half ahead and half behind. Besides new time zones are not likely to add to the per capita income of an average Indian. Yep the tide of time won’t reach all of sailing ships at the same moment :).
In my opinion there wouldn't be much benefit to India in adopting multiple time zones. One time zone s just fine. I feel it will create more confusion, cause more difficulties in day to day business. I guess anyways a good majority of Indian services are not exactly time conscious (always late), let’s them be the way they are.
So to understand let’s start from scratch. What’s the deal about having times zones? I tried doing some research on my own and I’ll try to summarize what I found out.
Indian Standard Time (IST) is the time observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time (DST is the practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less.) or other seasonal adjustments, although DST was used briefly during the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971 (Why? We’ll come to that later).
IST was not in practice in the British India, with regions maintaining their own time zones. It wasn’t until Independence that India’s two time zones were unified, while, ironically, the country itself was divided physically.
The country's east-west distance of more than 2,000 km covers over 28 degrees of longitude, resulting in the sun rising and setting almost two hours earlier on India's eastern border than in the Rann of Kutch in the far west. The peculiar problem is that every summer, the residents of our eastern states see the sun rising at 4 a.m. With hours to go before India’s workday begins, people wait in bed for the westward-moving sun to wake up the rest of India. Their forced procrastination has serious consequences. With nearly four hours of daylight wasted, there are big losses to eastern India’s productivity.
The country also loses a critical opportunity to tackle its worsening power crisis — especially the peak-hours power shortage that occurs early morning and late evening. The solution to both problems could lie in another re-partitioning of India — this time into two time zones.
R.K. Pachauri, director-general of The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), estimates that power shortages cost India up to 1.5 per cent of its GDP every year, with peak hour shortage rising to as much as 13.9 per cent. He says“Having two separate time zones will decouple the peak times in different parts of India and even allow for the possibility of transferring power between the states,”. In military and aviation time, IST is designated E* (standing for "Echo-Star"). In wartime daylight saving has been used to reduce civilian energy consumption.
Those who are for this change argue that daylight could be used to better effect if the country was divided by a north-south line into two time zones. But others who are opponents believe that this would cause social and economic problems as well as confusion.
On top of concerns is that having two time zones will disrupt everything from software systems in banking and finance to social and business interactions that may happen across time zones. Banks and Trading Markets would have to be reframed.
Also flights arising from east say from the city of Calcutta coming to Mumbai would practically take double the time to reach destination. Fliers won’t be the only ones affected. Examinations with the same test papers would be held at a delay in both zones but as the rules say that 12 board exams must begin simultanously in all schools across the country to ensure fairness. The voters in the eastern side would be able to declare the winner while voters in western side still stand in lines.
Other uncanny concerns obviously ought to come from the places least expected. Read in todays newspaper: In a series of political rallies, Thackeray repeatedly accused the Congress-NCP led state government of agreeing to the time zones only because it favours Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He can’t bear Bihar being two hours “ahead” of Maharashtra and said that this would represent the superiority of UP and Bihari people over the Marathi people.
That’s not all, behen Mayawati herself is being accused of suggesting to divide the state of UP based on time zones selling out to the upper caste constituencies who would fall in the two hour “ahead” time zone. The MLAs allege that this is a move against the oppressed and backward sections of society and a further attempt to deprive them of development. (what bullshit)
Prime Minister's Office will soon address the nation to alleviate the ongoing confusion but apparently the government seems to be confused over the timing of his speech.
There have been previous attempts to put this in order. In 2001, the government established a four-member committee under the Ministry of Science and Technology to examine the need for multiple time zones and daylight saving. The findings of the committee, which were presented to Parliament in 2004 by the then Minister for Science and Technology, Kapil Sibal ( I don’t under stand why this guy is involved whenever the most degrading of the decisions are made), did not recommend changes to the unified system, stating that "the prime meridian was chosen with reference to a central station, and that the expanse of the Indian State was not large enough."
What took me into thinking is that have all the other matters vanished that every body has gathered to discuss to this all-so-sudden-so-important problem? Well, it has merits and demerits. Though serious issues like energy can be helped but at the same time you can expect a 1/6th of the world’s population to be all clear about the concept itself, can you?
To tackle these problems there have been instruments all along. There are provisions in labour laws that allow the Central and State governments to define and set the local time for a particular industrial area. So a TATA nano plant (now just a thought) in Singur would operate two hours earlier than a nano plant in Pantnagar, Gujrat. So rather than having separate time zones just work in different working hours.
Bangladesh is +6:00 hours ahead of GMT and we are further beyond that. The option that we have is to either opt in for Daylight Saving Time where you (apparently) shift your typical working day by a couple of hours or to have a divided country half ahead and half behind. Besides new time zones are not likely to add to the per capita income of an average Indian. Yep the tide of time won’t reach all of sailing ships at the same moment :).
In my opinion there wouldn't be much benefit to India in adopting multiple time zones. One time zone s just fine. I feel it will create more confusion, cause more difficulties in day to day business. I guess anyways a good majority of Indian services are not exactly time conscious (always late), let’s them be the way they are.
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