Separate Time zone For North Eastern states?

[cowboysfan]

After 66 years of IST, Assam decides to go back to ‘chaibagaan time’ After 66 years of following the Indian Standard Time (IST), Assam has decided to go back in time to follow ‘chaibagaan time’, a daylight schedule British tea planters introduced more than 150 years ago. The resetting, the government feels, will help save energy and improve lifestyles impacted by the IST-induced late start of daylight work schedule. Chaibagaan or bagaan time was set one hour ahead of IST for tea estates, collieries and oil industry of Assam. Most tea estates still follow this time, so does the 112-year-old Digboi Refinery in eastern Assam. “IST has affected our productivity besides forcing us to follow a schedule not suited to the tim e zone we are in. The northeastern states have been asking New Delhi for a separate time zone. We have now decided to set our clocks to bagaan time,” Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said on Wednesday. He did not specify if the government had received Central sanction to follow a time one hour ahead of IST. Established on September 1, 1947, IST corresponds to the time schedule along the 82.5°E longitude near Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. States located to the west of this longitude have more daylight hours compared to those in the east. Advocates of dual time zones say bagaan time would help increase productivity, reduce domestic and commercial power consumption and curb alcoholism. But the Centre's Department of Science and Technology (DST), after examining the feasibility of setting up dual time in 2007, turned down a proposal to advance the clock in the northeast by an hour citing ‘acute administrative challenges’. DST officials also pointed to the scrapping of two metropolitan local times – Calcutta Time in 1948 and Bombay Time in 1955 – to justify adhering to a single time zone http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/after-66-years-of-ist-assam-decides-to-go-back-to-chaibagaan-time/article1-1168321.aspx

[Cricketics]

Good. Guwahati game will hopefully last 100 overs now in a day.

[Muloghonto]

That makes little sense. I would even say that many of their eastern cities are already far developed than our metro cities. The point is very simple if people start believing that time zone change will increase in productivity. We really do have a big problem. And the problem is in our minds and planning in believing in that nonsense.

U have no idea. There is a reason why USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, Brazil- all the big countries minus China and India have multiple time zones. It simply makes more sense to have 'five o'clock' as dawn during summer as it leads to an earlier start of the day. This makes a huge difference to farmers and service workers. For all those who are saying 'keep the time, start the day early', its much harder to coordinate different start times than it is to coordinate different time zones. When people say 'we work 8am to 4pm PST', its much easier and intuitive to work out what than means to an east coast person instead of 'we work 8am to 4pm in New York, 7am to 3pm in Indianapolis, 5am to 1pm in LA' and to remember all that differences. Its a proven thing that coordinating the start of the day (0500 hours) with sunrise leads to massive savings in power, as we optimize the availability of sunlight instead of having street lights on with the sunlight etc. That being said, India does not need a daylights saving time. Daylights saving times only matter for places that are high enough in latitude to have a significant sunrise to sunset & length of day variance between summer and winter. In most of India, which is in the tropics, the difference is minimal