One of the major lifestyle changes I made after moving to US early 2013 is giving up on morning newspaper. When I used to talk to my friends living here earlier I found it strange they did not get a newspaper. I thought everyone started the day after reading newspaper and could never imagine a start to the day otherwise. So after coming here I found it very hard to adjust and indeed started a trial subscription of Seattle Times and within a few days realized why people do not read newspaper ... there was nothing worthwhile in it ( its worse than Times of India! )
So I do get the days news on twitter and catch up news online through multiple websites/apps and most of the content I read is interest based so I would get to know about all events and activities related to Cricket, Tennis and most of the India news and some major global events. The point of all this rambling being that I never get real local news related to the place I live.
So a few weeks back I totally missed the fact that Day Light savings time (DST) ended and clock was changed by an hour.
These days we use alarm on the phones (which automatically recognize Daylight savings time changes) and first thing I pick up in morning for news and other stuff is ipad which was also time adjusted and on a sunday morning I was up at 6:45 and felt wide awake and hungry ( the time had changed by an hour so my body clock considered it 7:45 the time I should have finished my morning coffee) and only when my wife pointed it out later I realized that the time change had occured.
To me all this DST thing does is mild annoyance on having to change multiple convential 'Clocks' at home and also adjusting my Wrist Watches and the one in the car. This also changes the sleep patterns and hunger patterns and being someone who likes to stick to time for most daily activities, these pattern changes are annoying for the first couple of weeks and then you forget it. Then come next match , I need to move all these devices back by an hour again and adjust to another daily pattern. Within 2 years I'm annoyed at this so wonder how all others are in the areas where they do this are managing. My annoyance is also partly because I dont see the whole thing making much sense anymore in this age where world is no longer an agragian economy where we are sunrise influences our start of day. There seem to be equally persuasive arguements for and against DST on internet.
But what triggered off this post was discussion I had with friend with whom I catch up regularly and this time as well we chatted causually about various usual topics like our families, weather and such and then this DST topic came up and we started wondering if DST or even timezones makes sense in country like India. We discussed for a long time peddling several half truths both of us could remember and after while decided to settle it by checking internet later!
I found that India did follow DST at some point ( during World War) and India indeed had multiple timezones at some point and eventually settled on a single time. What I did not know until now was how much was the time variation across India.
quick google search tells me that : India spans longitudes of 68° at the western end and 98° at the eastern boundary and as there is a difference of one hour for every 15° of longitude, the two extremes differ by two hours. Thus, when the sun sets at 4 p.m. in Kohima, it sets at 6 p.m. in Porbunder.
For places in North East and places on western side, I'm sure this problem will be even more acute
As type this post, when I check the time in North East India is 6:10 and the time Bangladesh which lies to West of NE India is 6:40 and the time in Lahore,Pakistan is 5:40 but some places like Gujarat which lies west of Lahore is 6:10
One more interesting info : Bangladesh introduced DST 5 years back and advanced the clock by 1 hour during winter months ... yeah really!
So there is a genuine need and there were reports of demands from several areas in India for new timzone and DST but I would assume the offices/shops and life in general might be operating based on availble sunlight and the working hours might start early ( compared to rest of India) and might finish early and same with places on western side where the starting hours of shops/offices might be slightly later in the day accounting for late sunrise ( as per IST)
So even though we are on one single timezone, we probably have already factored these things in and do not require diffrent time zones. Another issue with having 2 timezones is the amount of effort and co-ordination needed and effort needed by Railways where so many things are done manually and already we have trouble with Indian Stretchable time and having multiple timezones is going to cause more problems. There are lot of studies and theories which blame the timezone as responsible for the lack of progress and various problems plaguing these regions
There are also interesting suggestions like bringing in a new timezone for Eastern areas and another one was for advancing the entire IST itself by 30 mins to solve problem faced by East but not creating huge problem for Western side but with business and power centered on the western part of the country I dont think that idea will work out. We remain only major country other than China which does not have multiple timezones
All in all the conversation on this topic and some digging around on internet has made me some sort of self-styled internet expert on this .... now off to pontificating on other online forums
So I do get the days news on twitter and catch up news online through multiple websites/apps and most of the content I read is interest based so I would get to know about all events and activities related to Cricket, Tennis and most of the India news and some major global events. The point of all this rambling being that I never get real local news related to the place I live.
So a few weeks back I totally missed the fact that Day Light savings time (DST) ended and clock was changed by an hour.
These days we use alarm on the phones (which automatically recognize Daylight savings time changes) and first thing I pick up in morning for news and other stuff is ipad which was also time adjusted and on a sunday morning I was up at 6:45 and felt wide awake and hungry ( the time had changed by an hour so my body clock considered it 7:45 the time I should have finished my morning coffee) and only when my wife pointed it out later I realized that the time change had occured.
To me all this DST thing does is mild annoyance on having to change multiple convential 'Clocks' at home and also adjusting my Wrist Watches and the one in the car. This also changes the sleep patterns and hunger patterns and being someone who likes to stick to time for most daily activities, these pattern changes are annoying for the first couple of weeks and then you forget it. Then come next match , I need to move all these devices back by an hour again and adjust to another daily pattern. Within 2 years I'm annoyed at this so wonder how all others are in the areas where they do this are managing. My annoyance is also partly because I dont see the whole thing making much sense anymore in this age where world is no longer an agragian economy where we are sunrise influences our start of day. There seem to be equally persuasive arguements for and against DST on internet.
But what triggered off this post was discussion I had with friend with whom I catch up regularly and this time as well we chatted causually about various usual topics like our families, weather and such and then this DST topic came up and we started wondering if DST or even timezones makes sense in country like India. We discussed for a long time peddling several half truths both of us could remember and after while decided to settle it by checking internet later!
I found that India did follow DST at some point ( during World War) and India indeed had multiple timezones at some point and eventually settled on a single time. What I did not know until now was how much was the time variation across India.
quick google search tells me that : India spans longitudes of 68° at the western end and 98° at the eastern boundary and as there is a difference of one hour for every 15° of longitude, the two extremes differ by two hours. Thus, when the sun sets at 4 p.m. in Kohima, it sets at 6 p.m. in Porbunder.
For places in North East and places on western side, I'm sure this problem will be even more acute
As type this post, when I check the time in North East India is 6:10 and the time Bangladesh which lies to West of NE India is 6:40 and the time in Lahore,Pakistan is 5:40 but some places like Gujarat which lies west of Lahore is 6:10
One more interesting info : Bangladesh introduced DST 5 years back and advanced the clock by 1 hour during winter months ... yeah really!
So there is a genuine need and there were reports of demands from several areas in India for new timzone and DST but I would assume the offices/shops and life in general might be operating based on availble sunlight and the working hours might start early ( compared to rest of India) and might finish early and same with places on western side where the starting hours of shops/offices might be slightly later in the day accounting for late sunrise ( as per IST)
So even though we are on one single timezone, we probably have already factored these things in and do not require diffrent time zones. Another issue with having 2 timezones is the amount of effort and co-ordination needed and effort needed by Railways where so many things are done manually and already we have trouble with Indian Stretchable time and having multiple timezones is going to cause more problems. There are lot of studies and theories which blame the timezone as responsible for the lack of progress and various problems plaguing these regions
There are also interesting suggestions like bringing in a new timezone for Eastern areas and another one was for advancing the entire IST itself by 30 mins to solve problem faced by East but not creating huge problem for Western side but with business and power centered on the western part of the country I dont think that idea will work out. We remain only major country other than China which does not have multiple timezones
All in all the conversation on this topic and some digging around on internet has made me some sort of self-styled internet expert on this .... now off to pontificating on other online forums
