Indian Standard Time (IST): The Government of India is now going to make Indian Standard Time (IST) compulsory for all legal, commercial, digital and administrative works across the country. Consumer Affairs and Food Minister Prahlad Joshi informed on Wednesday that for this very soon ‘Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025’ will be notified. These rules will be a historical step towards implementing a uniform time system across the country.
Why is a similar time important?
Currently many sectors of the country, such as banking, internet network and transportation, foreign time sources such as GPS are dependent on GPS. This leads to disturbances in digital transactions, risk of cyber attacks, inequality in billing and problems in time investigation. Minister Joshi said, “In today’s data-drive, if the watches are not synchronized, then there is a huge disturbance in the digital system.”
Now India will have ‘its own time’
This plan of the government is to establish IST completely in India. For this, work on ‘Time Decision Project’ is being done in collaboration with CSIR-NPL (National Physical Laboratory) and ISRO. Under this, state -of -the -art Atomic Clock Labs are being prepared in five cities of the country – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Faridabad and Guwahati which will be linked to safe network protocols like NTP and PTP. This system will give accuracy ranging from millicand to microseconds.
What is the benefit of the common man?
- Digital transactions will be more secure and reliable
- Electric-water-like utility billing will have accuracy
- Cybercrime risk will be reduced
- Things like Railways, Airlines, Internet and Phone Service will get a similar and coordinated time
- Digital data traceability will improve, which will make the investigation process easier
“Now we will be one nation, one time”
Prahlad Joshi said that “We will soon issue a notification of the rules. This is not just a plan, but soon ‘One Nation, One Time’ will become the reality.” He also clarified that after the implementation of these rules, no other time reference (such as a foreign time zone) will be valid in any work, unless it is specially approved by the government.
Representatives from more than 100 areas participated in the ‘Round Table Conference on Time Deaths’ held in Delhi on Wednesday, including people from telecom, banking, railway, energy and digital service sectors. Everyone supported this initiative and described it as a strong basis for digital India.
What is Greenwich Time and why there are different time in the world. Click here to read this.
Why is there only one time in India?
Today, there is a single time zone in India i.e. Indian Standard Time (IST), which was adopted a few years after independence, but during British rule, India was divided into two time zones. Especially the time of Kolkata was set aside, which continued till 1948.
However, even today there is a difference of about 90 minutes in the sunrise time in East and West India, but everywhere in the clock goes on at the same time. Its effect is seen in the northeastern states, especially in Assam, where the sun rises quickly and quickly grows. Because of this, many institutions follow ‘Tea Garden Time’, which is about an hour ahead of IST. Its purpose is to make maximum use of daylight so that the work hours can be completed in the sunlight.