The Politics of Time in India and China

The clock suggests it is closer to noon than dawn when the inhabitants of the Chinese region of Xinjiang are having breakfast. Now imagine that you are that guy from the Jumper movie who can change locations in a matter of seconds. If you can teleport yourself in a straight line from Kashgar toward the south, hopping above the chains of mountains, you will land in western India, where the clocks – contrary to the Chinese ones – confirm it is still morning. According to the national standard times, there is a two-and-a-half hour difference between the western fringes of China and western regions of India, but in reality these two areas could well belong to the same time zone. If you can save some of your superhuman powers to make another teleport jump in exactly the same moment, then transport yourself toward the east, landing in the easternmost regions of India. Here the situation is reverse. The Indian clocks suggest it is still breakfast but the people are well past their morning meal and still waiting for government offices to be open.

Vast countries like Russia, the United States, Canada, India, and China are spread wide from east to west, crossing a number of longitude lines. Russia, Canada, and the United States, therefore, do not follow a single national clock but are divided into several time zones (Russia holds the record with 11 time zones). The governments in New Delhi and Beijing, however, maintain a single national time zone.

Time can become a very arbitrary measure when it is confined by political borders.

To prove this, let us do some more teleporting. Let’s assume we will keep going only east and we will start our jumps in New Delhi at 9:00 AM (as of Indian Standard Time). If we skip from New Delhi to Nepal – surely to have a glimpse of the sunlit Himalayas – we should adjust our clock by 15 minutes, as the Nepal Standard Time is +15 minutes in comparison to the Indian one. If we then race through Nepal to its eastern corner and cross the border, we will be back in India and thus we will have to turn back our clock by 15 minutes.

Now, let us assume we are the India-Nepal border in the southeast corner of Nepal, in an area which is called the Siliguri Corridor or the Chicken’s Neck. Here, at the narrowest section, the India-Nepal border is only 27 kilometers in a straight line from the India-Bangladesh border. Thus, as said above, while entering India we need to switch our clock back from 9:15 to 9:00 but if we jump 27 kilometers southeast into Bangladesh, we will have to switch it forward again to 9:30, as the Bangladesh standard time is 30 minutes ahead of the Indian one. If we now continue east once more, crossing the territory of Bangladesh, we will be in Indian territory yet again and our confused wristwatch will be reset to 9:00. If we jump from there over the disputed Indo-Chinese border we will have to quickly reset the time to follow the Chinese one, and 9:00 a.m. will suddenly become 11:30 a.m.

It is this Indian territory east of Bangladesh – called the “Northeast” – that is at a particular disadvantage when it comes to Indian Standard Time. Not only is the northeast largely underdeveloped, ethnically different from the rest of India, and largely cut off from the rest of the country by Bangladesh, but it also has to follow the national standard time. For instance, the actual difference between the sunrise time in New Delhi and Imphal (the capital of the state of Manipur, a region in the northeast) is usually roughly one hour. “We wake up at 4 a.m.” complained Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, another state in the northeast, recently.

This situation bears many similarities to that of China’s Xinjiang. Just like India’s northeast, it is hugely economically underdeveloped (especially when compared to eastern, coastal China) and its inhabitants are ethnically, religiously, and linguistically different from the Han majority. But Xinjiang is also dominated when it comes to time zones, being forced to follow China Standard Time (informally called “Beijing time”), which is rooted in the coastal areas that lie thousands of kilometers east of Xinjiang. While the People’s Republic of China spans five geographic time zones, a unified national time zone means that the inhabitants of Xinjiang eat their supper when the official clocks suggests they should be already sleeping and their breakfast when the clocks suggests they should be at work.

Feeling dominated in many ways – including the realm of time – the people of both Xinjiang and the India’s northeast react in their own ways. As usual around the globe, citizens often bypass government regulations if they are stupid. As daylight is crucial for work efficiency in agricultural fields, the tea plantations of northeastern India have been long using their own, informal time zone, one hour ahead of the Indian Standard Time. In 2014, the chief minister of Assam – the biggest state in the northeast – claimed that his state would officially shift to this “tea plantation time.” In cities like Kashgar, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang have a similar practice of using their own, informal time, two hours behind the “Beijing time.”

While government offices and public transport timetables will display the official, China Standard Time, ordinary people often set their clocks to their local time and private places, like restaurants, may follow this time when it comes to their working hours.

With identity differences remaining strong, the time zone question has become yet another political issue in both regions. In Xinjiang, following the local time can be regarded as one of the trademarks of being loyal to the Uyghur identity. In India’s northeast, the demand for a separate time zone can also be regarded as being partially fueled by regional identity.

Pre-revolution China actually did have separate time zones but these – along with the host of other things – had been brutally unified by the communist regime of Mao Zedong. Colonial India also had a brief period of experimenting with separate time zones (“ Bombay time” and “Calcutta time”). While that was decades ago, the debate about this solution was never completely silenced and the arguments for carving out separate, regional time zones in China and India have been known for years. Following the same office hours across the width of the country means losing working hours, people’s time and efficiency, as well as precious electricity. In northeast India, people have to wait for government offices to be open when it is already late morning and in the cold period they may work until it is dark. The reverse is true in Xinjiang. The sun is an emperor in its own right: it does not follow the decrees of any prime minister or a party.

As India is far more democratic than China, the demands for a separate time zone are more audible in New Delhi than in Beijing. The idea is openly supported by some leading politicians in the northeast, such as the present chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu,or the former chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, as well as some leading intellectuals, such as Sanjoy Hazarika. A public interest petition seeking the same goal was filed in March 2017, but it was dismissed by the high court in Assam. This, however, may not be end of the time struggle.

The time issue may also possibly be solved in other ways. Rather than laying out new time zones, other options include introducing daylight savings time or instituting separate government office working hours in different parts of the country. To be sure, daylight savings time does create some confusion and requires additional effort. In countries that use this solution, such as Poland, the efficiency of the daylight savings time system is debated every year. Yet, Poland is a small country; the troubles with one time zone in huge states such as China and India are much bigger than the organizational issues connected with switching to and from the daylight savings time in Poland.

Alternatively, by the government’s decision, offices in Assam could start to open at 8:00 a.m. while offices in New Delhi will open at 9:00 a.m. This, however, may also create certain problems when companies and offices around the country have to communicate with each other. Yet, with differences of one or two hours, this should be manageable. After all, international companies with offices and partners across the globe somehow work out their communications just fine.

Regardless of which – if any – solution would be implemented, there is a bigger issue at stake. The question of the “national standard time” is similar to the problems with nearly anything that is simultaneously “national” and “standard” in a society that is highly diverse. The people of Xinjiang and northeast India have reservations about the “national standard time” also because it is yet another example of “national standardization” that, they feel, encroaches on their identities. Time zones politics are perhaps another issue governments in new Delhi and Beijing ought to recognize and handle with care.