Time Please

 

Most of the Western World shifted their clock by one hour last weekend which was the first weekend of November. For the next four months in March, we will have more difference between the Indian and US times. Offshore teams will adjust their world clocks reducing overlap, especially on East Coast.  Bank timings in India anyways are out of bounds during civil hours. The world never sleeps for Global citizens. In fact, it’s not the sun but the clock which set the time in the modern era. We discipline our lives by the time on the clock. Our working lives and wages are determined by it, and often our “free time” is rigidly managed by it too. Broadly speaking, even our bodily functions are regulated by the clock: We usually eat our meals at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are hungry, go to sleep at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are tired and attribute more significance to the arresting tones of a clock alarm than the apparent rising of the sun at the center of our solar system  

But shifting this hour is been discussed quite a lot in this part of the world. Standard time resumed pushing sunset and sunrise one hour earlier. Children here are reminded of the “fall back, spring forward” saying. The official change occurs when 2 a.m. EDT falls back to 1 a.m. EST.   Every state, except most parts of Arizona and Hawaii, observe daylight saving time. Daylight saving time was initially implemented as an emergency energy-saving measure during the world wars, but it stuck around.  Many people think about whether it is needed anymore. Pushing back the clock in winter is meant to give schoolchildren more morning sunlight on the way to school and to ensure more daylight during working hours for construction workers and other outdoor laborers. But whether the benefits in safety and energy savings outweigh the costs of shifted sleep cycles, drowsy commuters, and confusion from misaligned clocks is a long-running debate. The current November-to-March return to standard time was only set by the US federal law in 2007 though many states followed it earlier. But there’s been a growing movement calling for ditching fall back and sticking with spring forward. Last year, the US Senate unanimously voted to make daylight saving time permanent, but the legislation has been stuck in the House ever since, and it’s unclear if it will budge. Who’s going to win this argument? The scales seem to be leaning toward a year-round daylight saving time clock — but only time will tell.  

Fundamentally, shifting the clocks, either way, confounds people’s circadian rhythms, the 24-hour schedule followed by the metabolism that tells you when to eat, sleep, work and relax. For every hour that your sleeping time shifts, it takes a day to adjust. Health-wise, the serious health effects are associated with the “spring forward” shift. Fatal car accidents increase by around 6 percent on the days after that shift, for example. Heart attack rates go up as well, with studies finding a relative risk increase of 4 to 29 percent. There is also evidence for increased strokes, missed doctor’s appointments, and even suicides.  

Many people aim that daylight saving time should be the permanent standard. They argue mainly that more evening light promotes physical and mental health. Those hours of daylight better align with normal human circadian rhythms, which take their cues from sunlight exposure, as per the study by experts.  Energy consumption plays a pretty significant role in the discussion.  People’s schedules are based on the clock, but the sun is doing its own thing. Daylight saving reapportions lightness and darkness ratios, so people have more waking/productive hours when it’s light out and less electricity is needed. For that reason, DST has often been justified as an energy conservation measure, all the way back to World Wars I and II with national DST measures going into effect during World War I and World War II. But does it work? The research says it actually doesn’t. One research says, Of the 7 million households included in the study, the researchers found that using DST actually increased electricity demand, with fall usage going up between 2 and 4 percent and overall use by 1 percent. While DST worked to decrease the number of energy people used for lighting, they found it increased when it came to air conditioning. The economists also cite actual research and historical data showing the negative effects of lost sleep, including some major ones —the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, the massive oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.  

For years, ending daylight saving time has been a pet project for politicians. But it didn’t make headway in Congress until last spring when the Senate surprisingly passed a bill getting rid of daylight saving time just a couple of days after the annual March “spring forward” jolt in the clocks.   But 59 percent of people across the U.S., according to a poll from March, support ditching the clock change in favor of permanent daylight saving time. Some states are heeding that public interest and starting to evaluate their relationship with the practice on the state level.  At least 19 states have adopted resolutions or legislation to make daylight saving permanent — a show of their support on the issue. But then the experiment of making Daylight savings permanent failed in 1974 when many Americans and the senate dreaded the prospect of dark long winter mornings, especially for the children going to school.  So this time not sure if this move succeeds.  

 As usual there is politics about everything. Even the Time or ‘Samay’ as we say in the Indian context is not spared. But just to note we have no control over Time but it’s just clock settings we can change. Sun will rise as it has been since the ages.  We are just spectators here.