Standard Time — One clock for two thousand kilometres
Front
Standard Time
One clock for two thousand kilometres
The single national time, and the machinery that keeps it exact.
Back
India runs on one time zone, so the sun rises in Arunachal Pradesh nearly two hours before it does in Gujarat while both clocks read the same. IST is kept by atomic clocks at the National Physical Laboratory in Delhi and pushed out to phones, banks, and power stations. Shared time is what makes a timetable possible at all.
- IST sits 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of universal time, referenced to a meridian passing near Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.
- Computers do not trust their own clocks. They ask a time server many times a day, because a few seconds of drift can break a payment or corrupt a log.
Government of India IST notification
Keep exploring
Because you read Standard Time.
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A timetable is a safety system
The rail network, and the schedule that keeps trains off each other.
The Last Mile
The shortest leg costs the most
The final stretch to your door, and why it dominates the bill.
The Spectrum
The country sells air, and means it
The range of radio frequencies every phone and broadcast has to share.