Tarun Gogoi ‘s recent demand for another time zone for Assam and other North-eastern states of India,is fallacious. Creating more time zones will rob the country of its psychological sense of identity. Having another time zone for North and North-east India, will result in chaos. No wonder,Jammu&Kashmir could also revive its demand for an exclusive time zone. This could open a pandora’s box of demands from other regions. India’s neighbours: Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangla Desh have all got single time zone. China, much larger geographically than India, follows a uniform standard time. Srilanka follows the IST as its standard time.
In this nuclear age of supersonic ballistic missiles, having more than one time zone in India, could adversely impact military operations by hampering receiving unified commands at same point of time during war. A standard time for the armed forces across the country, is of the essence for strategic and efficiency reasons.Against this backdrop,the existing practice of ‘advancing the clock’, synchronizing with IST indicated by the Akashwani and Doordarshan, must continue. One hopes the Central government takes a holistic view in the matter by keeping the Indian Armed Forces, MOD,defence strategists , DoNER, DST,MEA in the loop.
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