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How India's Single Time Zone Is Hurting Its People (bbc.com) 175

"The BBC reports on the detrimental effects of all of India being in one time zone since British Colonial rule," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. From the report: India stretches 3,000km (1,864 miles) from east to west, spanning roughly 30 degrees longitude. This corresponds with a two-hour difference in mean solar times -- the passage of time based on the position of the sun in the sky. The U.S. equivalent would be New York and Utah sharing one time zone. Except that in this case, it also affects more than a billion people -- hundreds of millions of whom live in poverty. The school day starts at more or less the same time everywhere in India but children go to bed later and have reduced sleep in areas where the sun sets later. An hour's delay in sunset time reduces children's sleep by 30 minutes. Using data from the India Time Survey and the national Demographic and Health Survey, [Cornell University Economist] Maulik Jagnani found that school-going children exposed to later sunsets get fewer years of education, and are less likely to complete primary and middle school. He found evidence that suggested that sunset-induced sleep deprivation is more pronounced among the poor, especially in periods when households face severe financial constraints. "This might be because sleep environments among poor households are associated with noise, heat, mosquitoes, overcrowding, and overall uncomfortable physical conditions. The poor may lack the financial resources to invest in sleep-inducing goods like window shades, separate rooms, indoor beds and adjust their sleep schedules," he told me.
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How India's Single Time Zone Is Hurting Its People

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  • Ugh (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Timezone is the same... But is everyone FORCED to start school at the same time? Is there a law saying school on the west coast must start at the same time as school on the east coast? Is there a law saying parents must send kids to bed at 8pm regardless of season and location? Timezone enthusiasts are so dumb

    You want to be stuck on this planet forever? Because being so obtuse is how you get stuck on this planet and go extinct.

    When we start living off this planet we will need to be able to synchronize activ

    • Exactly. Even in the US the start time of schools is all over the place. Some cities even have staggered start times where some students start an hour after others. Sounds like someone wants to socially engineer something.
  • China is worse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @07:23PM (#58118690) Homepage
    it spans 5 time zones [wikipedia.org]. Its kids must have even more problems.
    • Re:China is worse (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @08:07PM (#58118842)

      it spans 5 time zones [wikipedia.org]. Its kids must have even more problems.

      The Chinese have figured out how to stagger school opening times. The students in Xinjiang go to class much later than students in Heilongjiang.

      Apparently the Indians haven't thought of that yet.

      • it spans 5 time zones [wikipedia.org]. Its kids must have even more problems.

        The Chinese have figured out how to stagger school opening times. The students in Xinjiang go to class much later than students in Heilongjiang.

        Apparently the Indians haven't thought of that yet.

        But it isn't just school. We offices and test sites spanning over 4 time zones. Given that the workday tends to happen when it is light out, Who loses? They start at 8 and end at 5. If I'm calling out west, I have to remember that I can't call a colleague before 11 .a.m. my time and he can't call me after 2 his time.

        Except for one assistan I had that couldn't figure that out, and I was on an extended trip to the west coast, and he kept calling me at 0800 his time. After the fourth time of getting me up

      • by longk ( 2637033 )

        Given the replies from some Indian slashdotters, they do seem to have it figured out afterall. Which makes you wonder WTH this article is about.

  • "The U.S. equivalent would be New York and Utah sharing one time zone. Except that in this case, it also affects more than a billion people -- hundreds of millions of whom live in poverty."

    I didn't think that many people actually lived in Utah... /kidding

    I have to admit the first thing I thought about, after reading this, was Futurama:

    Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah. But unlike Utah, it was eventually made livable. [youtube.com]

  • Try living in the Western US, or Canada, where stuff happens.

    Now, get rid of Daylight Savings Time and then we can discuss India and time zones, whilst the entirety of China, which is much much much wider, is in a single time zone.

    • whilst the entirety of China, which is much much much wider, is in a single time zone.
      But kids in the west of China don't get up same time as kids in the east ... similar to the rest of the business.

  • If later sunset is an issue then the DST is compounding that. Children at risk mentioned in this article still see sunset much earlier than in USA with DST. You see most of high latitude India falls near the center of the India and hence they are not affected. The only people affected are West zone mid latitude who may see about 30 minute time delay (95% of India population is within +- 30 min of mid longitude). So most people see sunset before 7:30 pm (95%). Now compare that to US with DST where more than

    • by Tomahawk ( 1343 )

      Yes, but the start of the school day changes too. So if they are losing sleep in the evening they can gain it back the next morning

      The case of the article is that children on the west coast of India and children on the east coast of India are starting school at the exact same time, yet the children on the west coast have sunset an hour later, so get to sleep later. They don't get up later, though, they get up at the same time.

      Add a timezone and then they get up an hour later, and thus get more sleep.

      DST d

      • children on the west coast of India and children on the east coast of India are starting school at the exact same time

        1. False - even the summary of this article states that they are "more or less" the same, not exact same time.

        2. Even more-or-less the same is wrong - as I explained in this comment : https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]

        Add a timezone and then they get up an hour later, and thus get more sleep.

        Bullshit. Just get the school to open later - as can be and is frequently done at state, district or school level.

        Another blatant lie from the article

        School summer vacations in India are between April and June

        Absolutely false - or rather an illiterate's generalization. Multiple southern states have summer vacations for children from March-May. Kashmi

    • Perhaps you want to read at least the summary.

      East to west sunset difference is 2 - 3 hours. Not 30 minutes. And DST has nothing to do with it.

  • by evenmoreconfused ( 451154 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @08:25PM (#58118908)

    In Canada, Quebec and Ontario are both in Eastern Standard Time, also nearly a 30 degree span.

    • by LostOne ( 51301 )

      Not all of Ontario. A very large chunk of northern Ontario (everything west of Thunder Bay, roughly) is on Central Time. (Actually, the time zone split should go through the middle of Thunder Bay but it was shifted west one railroad stop for practical reasons.)

  • Geography of India (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @09:22PM (#58119134) Journal
    The IST is based on the longitude passing through Allahabad and Chennai, right in the middle of its east-west spread. It is smack dab in the middle of Ganges plain in the north. The entire fertile plains of the rivers Godavari, Mahanadhi, Krishna and Cauvery are centered around that meridian.

    The portion exposed to later sunsets, by 30 minutes are the states of Rajastan and the kutch of Gujarat. The most arid, dry parts of India that includes the Thar desert. At the border is Pakistan, in a different time zone giving children across the border better sleep time.

    One would think compare the achievements of children across the border of India and Pakistan to see the effect of time zone, while keeping remaining geographical influences the same. Instead the researcher compares the densely populated fertile parts of India with the desert part of India and tries to attribute the differences to the time zone.

    It is a thesis from Cornell. I read only the abstract and the intro. I did not see any indication the researcher is controlling for this. Hope there is a good explanation for it.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      You would have to take into account the difference of culture (religion, education) and politics (education startegy) into the impact which would make it far worse to compare than a west/east indian comparison.
      • I agree. It is not easy to do these comparisons, the researcher has done some mathematical modeling to extract correlation coefficients, but I am afraid the signal he/she is looking for is very faint and is easily overwhelmed by these larger influences.
  • >"The school day starts at more or less the same time everywhere in India"

    Well, perhaps THAT is the main problem then? Perhaps they should start school an hour later or earlier on the fringes. Or is there some law not allowing that? Wow, such a complicated problem.

  • by Sivaraj ( 34067 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @02:28AM (#58119706)

    The "researcher" is trying to invent the problem where nothing exists. Most likely he has already written his paper before collecting data, and fit the data to suit his theory. He tactfully adds that problem is for "poor" people, so that anybody will think twice before rebutting his theory.

    India is perfectly fine with a single time zone. Our east wakes up when the sun is coming up, around 4 AM. In the west they may normally go to bed couple of hours after sun goes down, regardless what the clock says. Our day light hours vary very little with season with maximum deviation of about 4 hours in northern latitudes. So India is much better placed with number of night hours than most of US.

    The real problem is for the IT slaves working night shifts to cover US time zones, which no time zone tweaking is going to fix.

    • The real problem is for the IT slaves working night shifts to cover US time zones, which no time zone tweaking is going to fix.

      Well, if you shifted over to Eastern Standard Time , the problem would be solved /s

  • This is similar to Europe.
    Rigio, in Greece, is at 26.5 E, and Campos in Spain is 9.28 W, so that's a difference of over 35.8 degrees. They are roughly the same lattitude (41.4 vs 43, respectively), and they are in the same time zone.

    In India's case, it's all one country. So you can understand why they might have the one timezone.

    In the case of Europe, there are many countries in between these two points, so there's is more reason to have multiple time zones across here.

    There are several countries in Afric

    • They are roughly the same lattitude (41.4 vs 43, respectively), and they are in the same time zone.
      No they are not.

      Greece is plus one, or even plus two, to lazy to look it up for you.

  • by bingoUV ( 1066850 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @05:29AM (#58119982)

    The school day starts at more or less the same time everywhere

    Private schools can choose their starting time - unless the time is prohibited by law, or local district regulation. School laws fall under state subject - which means the state is the primary legal entity responsible for creating such laws. None of the states measures 3000 kilometers. 800 km is rarely or maybe never a distance in any direction to any direction in a state - let alone latitudinally.

    District collector can order schools to start at times deemed convenient for kids - no district measures more than a few hundred km in any direction.
    E.g. https://indianexpress.com/arti... [indianexpress.com]

    There are many multi-shift schools - which have 2 sessions per day. So within a school, there are kids in multiple "time zones" - e.g. 7am to noon, and 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

    Ask 10 children in India their school timings, and you will likely get 12 unique answers.

  • https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

    "In 1942, the Spanish dictator General Franco moved Spain onto Central European Time to follow Nazi Germany." ...and they remain there today. That is, Spain is West of Greenwich, but on the time zone one East of Greenwich. And its a 2013 article about this costing productivity, but they remain there today.

  • by longk ( 2637033 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @08:48AM (#58120412)

    The timezone does not force kids go to the school at the same time all over India. Stupid people do.

    IMHO having a single timezone and not having to deal with conversions is mostly beneficial. But you need to let go of the idea that everyone works from 9 to 5 or goes to school at a set time.

    In the tiny Netherlands, which is certainly within a single timezone, schools vary their starting times however they see fit. Even their holidays vary, though that is determined regionally and not per school.

  • I think we should get rid of timezones, all together, and just stick with UTC. The problem is humans have been conditioned to think that the sun rises around 7am (yes it varies depending on the time of year etc). But there is no reason we can't change our thinking. For someone living in NYC, it means the sun rises at 12UTC. But it would 12UTC around the world. It's mental thing. No one will like it. It would save such confusion about "what time is there".

As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one. -- Dave "First Strike" Pare

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