Dilip R. Ahuja and D.P. Sengupta from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, believe India should have one standard time but the IST should be advanced by half an hour to save energy.
Why would two time zones, or more, be undesirable for India?
In our country, different time zones may cause further alienation between the more prosperous west, north and the south, and the less prosperous east. It would also be difficult to implement, create problems for railways and civil aviation and human errors may lead to catastrophic accidents. But above all, another time zone for the east/northeast will not lead to any significant saving of energy, which is why we pleaded for one time zone but asked the Indian Standard Time to be advanced by half an hour. Incidentally, China has a single time zone, advanced by an hour.
How much energy can possibly be saved if IST is extended by half an hour?
Funded by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, our study stretched over three years, all the five power grids in the country and many states. We concluded that all states stand to benefit and energy savings could be as high as 2.7 billion units of electricity, sufficient to power 1.35 million households, assuming each home consumes 2,000 units a year.
You submitted the recommendation to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency in 2011. Has there been any movement since then?
Since then, we’ve been invited to make presentations to the ministry of power, the secretary, department of science & technology, principal scientific advisor to the cabinet, the scientific advisory committee and to the Planning Commission. We were given to understand that it lies with the cabinet secretariat. The recent revival of the demand by the Assam CM may force another reconsideration.
How will extending IST by half an hour help improve productivity?
Increase in productivity cannot be quantified but by using sunlight longer we are likely to improve productivity and certainly save on the use of artificial light.
The West uses the Daylight Saving Time (DST). Why can’t we?
DST is useful the further you move from the Equator either to the north or the south. We are too close to the Equator to need or, for that matter, benefit significantly from it. Besides, it involves changing the clock twice every year. Time zones will make this necessary every time you cross one zone to another. A uniform standard across the country will make it redundant. According to our suggestion, you have to advance the clock only once by half an hour and that should be all.
It has been suggested that office and school timings in the Northeast should change so as to maximise daylight use, as in the ‘Tea Garden Time’. Why didn’t it work?
The proposal was possibly ignored because of the opposition from the civil service there. They feared that it would lead to a 25 per cent decrease in office time overlap there vis-a-vis Delhi and other state capitals and would consequently lead to a loss in productivity.
Shouldn’t states be left free to decide timings in view of the sunlight available?
There is no reason why schools or the corner shop have to adhere to any unrealistic time constraints. But there are banks, major offices, multinationals etc which are interlinked and will face serious disruption and chaos if there are different timings in different states.
