Recently an issue has been raised regarding the creation of two time zones in the country. Till now, only a single time zone has been followed by the country. Whereas many other countries like China, Russia, etc. have more than one time zone. Geographically it has been observed that the countries which have a large longitudinal spread have a greater need for more than one time zone. The reason is that the sun rises early on the eastern most part and the standard time there has a huge difference with the western most part. But in case of India, the time zone serves the country well except for the north eastern part of the country. Here, the people there face a lot of problem since the daylight lasts for a lesser period of time. The time difference between the easternmost and the western most part of the country is around one hour. India spans longitudes of 68.7° to 97.25° east and as there is a difference of one hour for every 15° of longitude, the two extremes differ by two hours. IST was fixed at 82.5°, or 5/ hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The option is not very much feasible for India like other countries because India has a huge population and there is a free movement throughout the country. This means that when one crosses a time zone, he has to adjust his watch every now and then. It might cause a lot of problems for traders, travelers and especially to the Indian railways. Railway signals are yet not fully automated and many routes have single tracks. This might lead to train accidents also. An advance IST by half an hour to being six hours ahead of GMT could be a possible solution. But with the change in seasons the same problems with time and daylight might occur. Many countries adopt the day light saving technique for maximizing the daylight. In this method, time adjustment is done according to seasons. But such is recommended for countries away from the equator where there is a huge difference in the duration of day and night respectively.
