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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.
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 activities AND take care of our needs, and we will be in places where there isn't a ~24 hour day.
It's not even complicated, people are just being stupid about it.
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.
In Canada, Quebec and Ontario are both in Eastern Standard Time, also nearly a 30 degree span.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
That system was figured out a long time before there was a US. Every city used to have somebody whose job it was to observe the sun and set the city's clock accordingly. The problem was, that effectively means you have near infinite timezones, with everybody running on solar time.
Exact opposite. You didn't read the article, did you? DST will worsen the situation. In fact, if the paper is correct, it is a strong case to abolish DST in US and other countries.
Are you in the south? People in the south tend to not like DST because their daylight hours aren'tas variable as those in mid-north latitudes. Some places like Minnesota would have their kids waiting for the school bus in pitch black during the winter, and even in Pennsylvania, during the summer, there would be 4 hours of daylight before many people get up.
The DST and now single Time zone proponents are like a mild form of anti-vaxxing. We could all go on UT, but as an Amateur radio operator, we have to, and it just makes for different complexities.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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
That system was figured out a long time before there was a US. Every city used to have somebody whose job it was to observe the sun and set the city's clock accordingly. The problem was, that effectively means you have near infinite timezones, with everybody running on solar time.
Exactly. We live on a globe, and unless we are going to submit to chaos, there has to be time zones. The DST issue is related because of changes in latitude. The variations in daylight between locations nearer the equator are much less than those the further north or south we go. That's the place where concession to daylight darkness makes some sense.
But we live on a tilty globe. And just like any map projection, no time zone light/dark cycle will be perfect. If we dump the present system, we'll just have to learn a different one with it's own set of problems.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
and its not pitch black, its snow white during the winter
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.
The problem is that you just swap one problem - different time zones for another one - not knowing the hours of operation of the place you're calling.
For example, if you ring someone in a different time-zone now, you can just ask what time it is there, e.g. it's 9am there but 10am where you are, and you immediately know they're 1 hour behind you and that office hours there are still "9 to 5".
However the "no time zones but everyone works different hours based on the sun" system would in fact be more confusing than having time zones. Then, if you ring someone they can't just say "it's 3am here" and you know you've rung at the wrong time. "3am" could be the middle of the afternoon there, or it could be the middle of the night, you have no way of working that out without additional information that the call hasn't provided. Instead of knowing the time offset of each place, you'd have to have a chart for every city for what is considered "work hours" there.
Some towns would be 9am-5pm. Some towns would work 9pm-5am. Some would work from 6pm-3am. Yeah, great, so we got rid of "timezones" so now it's the "same time" everywhere, except we've lost all additional layers of context for what a time of "5pm" actually means, which means we have to convey additional information on calls, not less.
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.
They should delay school by 2-3 hours across the whole country so the kids can sleep better, it's standard practice to start school a few hours before the time (research shows) that kids are actually wide awake.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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...
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.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Except in the biggest country in the world, which goes all the way up to the artic. Russia seems to have decided against DST. But then theyâ(TM)re also already managing something like 14 time zones.
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...
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. Kashmir region has a very short summer vacation - and a 45 day winter vacation.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
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'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.
Especially when the solution is obvious: Just start the school day an hour later in the west.
Indeed, and I've always thought this would be the proper solution, not just for India, but regarding schools in the rest of the world instead of having the Daylight Saving Time switch. I think mainland US could run on one time. Just use central time. The work day doesn't have to be 8 to 5; it can be any time, if it's 11 to 8 on the West coast, and people don't go to bed until after midnight... so be it. From a logistics standpoint, it seems adjusting what hours people work makes more sense than having "time zones" across a country.
For anyone that might whine and say "but 12pm is supposed to be when sun is at peak in the sky", I don't care, mostly because for the majority of the year that isn't true already. We're already an hour out of sync with "scientific noon" most of the year because of Daylight Saving Time- it hasn't caused planes to fall out of the sky.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Unfortunately children are biological organisms and not machines. You can send a child to bed two hours earlier, and even do it consistently, but they still won't fall asleep at that time. Having a routine set is only part of the problem, the other part of the problem is millions of years of evolution that makes our sleep cycle correspond with the sun.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch