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How India's Single Time Zone Is Hurting Its People (bbc.com)
"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.
it spans 5 time zones. Its kids must have even more problems.
A country can try to solve more than one issue at once.
A country can try to solve more than one issue at once.
Especially when the solution is obvious: Just start the school day an hour later in the west.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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'm from that general area. DST is annoying except for people who want an extra hour to drink at the bar. School doesn't have to start at "7:30am" all year long. It can start at 7:30a at one time of the year and 8:30a at another time. Problem solved. Does the same thing without the retarded obsession of trying to match time with the sun. Why the fk would you care about where the sun is when you only get 6 hours of it?! It's gone almost all day during the time of year that DST is meant to help. Even when the sun is up, I can't see it through these thick winter clouds.
Yay, noon time matches peak sun.... for a few days of the year. I know, lets go full retard. Daylight shifts by 3 minutes every day. Lets have a dst for every day of the year, that'll be even better! Can you imagine of the utopia?
DST is unnecessary complexity for a simple problem that is only a problem because people make it to be a problem.
The whole of society doesn't want to start the fucking day a 10am. The little bastards need to go to bed at night instead of staying up late. I know, I was one of those little bastards not long ago.
I would stay up on my computer until midnight or worse and gee, wonder why 1st period was always so difficult.
Now as an adult, I work at 5:30am. I know that if I don't go to bed by 9 that I won't have much sleep and will basically be putting my next day on hard mode.
Want kids to do better in school? Then they need to fucking go to bed at the right time and not when THEY want to go to bed. Children clearly do not know what is best for them otherwise they wouldn't be children. For that matter, many adults do a poor job at it.
As we all quickly realize, the world does not revolve around your sensibilities.