Does India's Northeast need a new time zone?

A group of members of Parliament (MPs) from the Northeast have once again raised the demand for a separate time zone for the northeastern states. Different time zones in North America and Europe have been in vogue for a long time. Countries with extreme cold weather also have different time for summers called Daylight Saving Time (DST). Setting the clock back by half an hour or one hour helps better use of daylight in these countries, and helps them save energy. It has been argued that Northeast India needs a separate time zone for the same reason.

The difference in sunrise/sunset time between the eastern and western parts in India is about two hours. Since day breaks earlier in the east than the rest of the country, a different time zone could allow people there to start working sooner. This could lead to energy saving and productivity gains. In fact, tea gardens in Assam start work at 8am, continuing a practice started during the colonial rule. This timing is so widespread that it is nick-named “bagaan timing” or the tea garden time. In effect, tea gardens in Assam follow their own informal time zone.

Three options have been examined by scientists in this regard over the years: creating two times zones in India, introducing DST from April to September and advancing the Indian Standard Time (IST) for the entire country by half an hour.

The underlying objective in all three case is energy saving. After considering all the options, an expert panel constituted by the ministry of science and technology in 2002 rejected the idea of DST as well as a different time zone.

It felt that seasonal difference in daylight hours is marginal in countries closer to the equator than those near the poles. The panel, therefore, concluded that different time zones may not result in any benefits to northeastern states but may pose difficulties for airlines, railways and communication services.

On the other hand, researchers from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, have found that by just advancing our clocks by 30 minutes we can save about 2.7 billion units of electricity every year. Unlike DST, resetting of IST is going to be just a one-time affair. However, calculations done by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in 2011 pegged the energy savings much lower. All the studies related to tinkering IST so far have focused on energy saving and technical problems relating to essential services like trains, airlines and power grids. The issue of standard time has a lot to do with the everyday life of people.

Very little or no research has been done on societal aspects of a different time zone for the Northeast. It is time that some pilot studies are taken up to study the feasibility of a new time zone in the region. Meanwhile, we can also experiment with daylight saving measures like advancing working hours for government offices, commercial establishments and schools.

This will give us data on likely impact of a different time zone for the Northeast.