Do Separate Time Zones in a Country Promote Harmony or Dissent?

The sunrise times in central and northeast India vary by more than one hour. But are separate time zones a good idea in a country already scarred by internal racism?

The author dressed in a Mekhela Sador — the traditional outfit for the women of Assam (Image source: Anangsha Alammyan on Instagram)

“Okay bye, I’ll call you later,” I gush to my friend, as I place the phone between my ear and shoulder, locking the door and stepping out. “It’s going to get dark soon and I want to make the most of the last daylight hours.”

“But yaar, I thought you’d go for a walk before sunset,” my friend complained.

“Yes, and it’s going to be dark in an hour,” I tell her, rushing down the stairs.

“But it’s only 5 PM.”

And then it hit me why my friend was finding it so hard to believe. She lives in New Delhi, the capital of India, while I’m from Assam — a state in the northeastern part of India. Our country has a single time zone for all the states, but Assam and New Delhi have a longitudinal difference of 15.85.

Just to brush up some high school geography, the twenty-four hours of a day are divided by 360 degrees — a complete revolution of the earth on its axis. Hence, a distance of 15 degrees on the map amounts to a time difference of one hour. This calculation makes the difference in the times of sunrise between Assam and New Delhi a whopping 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 24 seconds.

For someone living in mainland India, it’s hard to believe that even in early May, the sun can go down as early as 6 PM. But it does, and that’s one of the many ways why life in northeast India is incomprehensible to someone who has never been to this part of the country.

Aside from being a tactical disadvantage, several other issues aside from this early sunset, namely:

• Fewer daylight hours leading to more electricity usage.
• Traveling from the northeast to other parts of the country and vice versa can require a resetting of the biological clocks, leading to a few days of a jetlag-like effect.

In fact, there were talks of instating a separate time for the northeastern part of India. In 2018, the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory and…