NEW DELHI: A separate time zone for the North East is not viable despite the growing demand but the official timing in the region can be advanced by 30 minutes or an hour, renowned economist and NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy said.
Recently, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu raised the demand for a separate time zone for the North East. However, Debroy, in an article published in a metro daily, pointed out that having a separate time zone puts the North East out of sync with the natural diurnal rhythm.
“One can imagine, if the country were divided into time zones, there would be utter public chaos at borders,” he said.
A majority of the population resides in rural areas in the North East and they would “find it difficult to graft the concept of changing time zones” and co-ordinating with governments and businesses would also become difficult, the economist, who is from Meghalaya, said.
Explaining other hurdles of a new time zone, Debroy said any error in resetting clocks across borders may have disastrous consequences, particularly for railways where there are manual interventions in signalling and time-tabling.
“And more importantly, it could also be a threat to the unity of the country. Insurgency movements could twist and manipulate different time zones for political gains,” he said, adding, “As a potential solution why not shift the official business timings in the North East by half an hour or one hour?”
“This would mean that offices and business would start and end early. The usual 9.30 am to 5.30 pm cycle would become 8:30 am to 4:30 pm instead and won’t require large-scale adjustments,” he pointed out.
Schools, colleges and universities or even private shops won’t be impacted at all and transport entities such as railways and airlines can continue with the current timetables, Debroy said. Government offices and possibly business houses will need to ensure that their coordination happens during the working window and last-minute rushes are avoided, he added.
Describing the difficulties in having separate time zones, Debroy said that having one separate time zone puts the North East out of sync with the natural diurnal rhythm. “One can imagine, if the country were divided into time zones, there would be utter public chaos at borders,” he wrote.
Going back to the history, Debroy said interestingly, India had two-time zones before Independence – Calcutta time and Bombay time with more than an hour’s gap between them. There was a Bagaan Time as well, followed locally in the tea gardens of Assam.
Post-Independence, the government adopted IST (5.30 hours ahead of GMT) as one standard time zone. The rationale was to institute uniform timekeeping across the country.
This was crucial to eliminate any grounds of confusion in transportation or government workings and ensure smooth coordination across the country, Debroy said. While seven decades have passed, several concerns still remain.
True that the push for having two time zones has merit, but the reason for not having the same is also compelling, and possibly even more so. The government had examined this issue in the past and decided against multiple time zones.
Few years ago, scientists from National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore drafted a paper on this subject. They instead proposed advancing the IST by 30 minutes, ie, GMT + 6 hours, but this too involves huge preparations, the NITI Aayog member pointed out.
