On December 3, Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi moved a Private Member Bill in the Lok Sabha to establish and demarcate two separate Time Zones that will provide for more practical and inclusive administration in India.
Congress MP tweet stated, “Northeast wakes up earlier and loses good one to two hour of productivity everyday against IST. In the LokSabha today I moved a Private Member Bill to establish and demarcate 2 separate Time Zones to provide for more practical and inclusive administration in India.”
Context of the Bill by Congress MP
The demand for a dual time zone in the country to increase productivity and ensure easy administration is a long standing one. The Northeastern states have been facing difficulty in managing their routine work schedule.
Is the demand feasible?
A study carried out by Bengaluru- based National Institute of Advanced Studies in 2017 concluded that a separate time zone for the northeastern region could help in saving 2.7 billion units of electricity every year.
In the Northeast, the day starts getting brighter by 4am and darker by 5pm.
So, by the time people start working, half the day has already passed and this requires lights to remain on for longer beyond sunset, using more electricity.
A different time zone would allow sunsets to take place later, allowing citizens to better use their daylight hours.
Can the move work if implemented?
Interestingly, before Independence the country was following three major time zones- Bombay, Calcutta and Madras Time. India had no official time zone till 1906 there were three presidencies: Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and three local times for three cities, depending on where they fell in longitude. The three time zones, thus created, were followed by all the states or cities around and near it. Calcutta was set at UTC +05.54, making it +00:24 of the current IST. Madras was set at UTC +05.21 making it -00.09 of the current IST and Bombay at UTC +04.51 making it -01.19 of the current IST.
To deal with this the tea gardens of Assam have been following ‘Chaibagaan Time’ which is one hour ahead of IST.
Therefore this move will benefit the Northeast economically and administratively in the long run.
