Imagine that the Indian Standard Time (IST) is advanced by half-an-hour to be six hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can stick my neck out and say it is a win-win situation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d DP Sen Gupta, honorary professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) and one of the scientists who pitched this idea, told the Hindustan Times from Bangalore. <\/p>\n
The likely effects: office goers will get an extra half-hour of evening daylight to commute home. Petty crime in the dusk may drop. Sixteen per cent of peak evening electricity will be saved.<\/p>\n
But at 8 am in Silicon Valley, California, it will be 9 or 10 pm in India instead of 8.30 pm or 9.30 pm today. Global businesses operating out of India will overlap more with China and Japan than the US.<\/p>\n
Children in Punjab will go to school in the dark due to later winter sunrises, unless schools change timings. And families in the north and west will switch on lights early morning for a few winter weeks. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Six hours would be an integral number. We belong to five per cent of the countries with fractional time differences (five and half hours),\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sen pointed out.<\/p>\n
But the IST, the official time standard since Independence, will not be modified unless the Cabinet decides to. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am aware of the proposal,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal told HT. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for Cabinet to decide, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a science and technology issue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The scientists are sending their paper to the Planning Commission. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We would be happy to make a presentation to them or a Parliamentary sub-committee,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the NIAS professor Dilip Ahuja. <\/p>\n