52 R. D. Oldliam — On Time in India. [APBit, 



and for the second the only recommendation is that it would involve a 

 change of only 9 minutes from the standard at present in use on the 

 Indian raihva3-s. But if a change is to be made it is immaterial whether it 

 is one of 9 or 21 minutes, each would be equally inconvenient at first, and 

 the slight feeling of inconvenience would pass off as rapidly in the one 

 case as in the other. 



Against the adoption of either of these two standards, is to be placed 

 the fact that the Indian railway sj^stem must inevitably become linked up, 

 as has already happened to the telegraph system, with the railways of 

 Europe and Western Asia on the one hand, and of the far East on the other. 

 In the first of these Grreenwich time is already the standard, and on the 

 other it will probably be adopted. There would then be a change of a 

 fraction of an hour, or of some odd number of minutes, at the junction, 

 instead of the much simpler change of a whole hour, or perhaps no change 

 at all. 



Another objection to the adoption of either Madras time, or 5^ hours 

 fast of Greenwich, as the standard is that if combined with the hour 

 zone system it would necessitate three separate times in India. A 

 central time would be used by Bengal, Madi-as, Central Provinces, North- 

 West Provinces, Central India, llajputana and pi'obably, for convenience, 

 Bombay, exclusive of Sind ; western time, one hour slow of Central, would 

 be used by the Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan ; while eastern time, one hour 

 fast of Central, would be used in Assam and Burma. 



If, on the other hand, the hour-zone system be adopted in its complete- 

 ness, using Greenwich as the starting-point, we would only have two times 

 in India, an Eastern time, exactly 6 hours fast of Greenwich, used by 

 Bengal, Assam and Burma, and a AVestern time, exactly 5 hours fast of 

 Greenwich, used by the rest of India. Once this system was adopted the 

 traveller in either group of provinces or presidencies would find the same 

 time in use everywhere, and when he crossed the boundary he would but 

 have to remember that the time was an even hour fast or slow of that he 

 was carrying with him. At first it might seem strange to find that the 

 mail train from Calcutta took only half an hour to travel from Buxar to 

 Moghal Sarai, while it took, or appeared to take, two hours and a half to 

 travel in the opposite direction, but the experience of America and Europe 

 has shown that no real difficulty arises from this change of an even 

 hour at certain defined places, and that people readily adapt themselves to 

 it, more readily indeed than to the daily change of time at sea or to that 

 immense improvement, the twenty-four hour system of reckoning time. 



To understand what the adoption of the S3'stem would mean in practice, 

 let us take the case of Calcutta. In the first place we should have to put 

 our watches back G minutes, and there the sum and total of all that can be 



