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Manipulating time

MAS. Molla
Of course, we need to work more during daylight, using the free sunlight and consuming as little energy as possible. To do this, instead of manipulating time, the government can change just the working schedule during April-September; no office or industry will defy that.
LATITUDE determines the seasons in a country. The TYopic of Cancer runs over the middle of Bangladesh, and there is daylight for more than 12 hours during April to September. We don't change the working hours during this period although there is a provision for morning school in some areas for a few weeks or months in summer.
Against this backdrop, our energy minister declared early this year that he knew how to save a substantial portion of electricity that was being wasted during evening hours. The prescription was simple: just advance the clock one hour during the longer sunlight period of the year. The discovery of our minister is, however, not a new one. Daylight saving time (DST) has been in practice since the early 20th century in some western countries.
To understand this phenomenon, let's first see how time is set. Geographical natural time is set at 12 noon, defining that as the shortest distance from the sun when the sun
shines almost at right angles over the geographical area concerned. Thus, noon divides the morning and afternoon hours almost equally. However, every country need not calculate the position of the midday sun. Once this is done in a country, others can adjusi standard time according to its long: tude. Anyway, manipulating this natu ral standard time by advancing an hour converts noon to 1 pm, and the morn ing hours become artificially shorter and the afternoons longer.
A New Zealander, entomologist G.V. Hudson, thought of DST first in 1895. He needed some extra daylight period after office work to observe insect behaviour. To realise this personal need, he proposed to advance the clock by an hour during summer. But nobody was convinced of his idea then. Later, in 1905, William Willett, during his morning rides, found many Londoners still sleeping. That is, Londoners were not following the natural change in sunrise time and were wasting daylight in sleeping. So Willet published the idea of DST and lobbied throughout the UK until his death in 1915 for advancing time artificially.
During WW-I, Germany and its allies took up Willet's idea and introduced on April 30, 1916, the system of advancing the clock by an hour to have longer afternoons for working in daylight, thus conserving rapidly depleting coal. A number of European countries followed suit. In Europe and America about 1.6 billion people follow this plan during the summer months -- called "summer time" in UK and "daylight saving time" in Europe and America. Malaysia and Singapore permanently
fixed the clock one hour ahead. Thus, the sun is made to rise around 7 am and set around 7 pm, though it would rise and set naturally in these tropical countries at around 6 o'clock round the year.
The DST measure helps in using sunlight after office hours in retailing, sports and other activities that would consume electricity if done during evening hours. Thus, the immediate benefit is saving some energy, as the term signifies. However, the cost of such artificial timing is high. People must remember to change their clocks; this consumes time. As more devices contain clocks, more time is spent changing them. People who work across time zone boundaries need to keep track of multiple DST rules, as not all locations observe DST or observe it the same way.
The length of the day becomes variable. Disruption to meetings, travel, broadcasts, billing systems, and records management is common, and can be expensive. Not only that, research revealed some health problems because human bodies don't adjust to daily rhythms set artificially by clocks. Roenneberg of'Lddwig-'MaKiHHlian, University in Munich warned: "When we implement small changes into a biological system which by themselves seem trivial, their effects, when viewed in a broader context, may have a much larger impact than we had thought."
The DST is based on the idea that a few people like politicians, administrators and scientists understand the
changes in position of the sun round the year; the general mass is insensitive to seasonal changes but just obeys the time that the clocks and watches tick out. This idea disregards human knowledge and treats people as machines, or at best guinea-pigs and rats.
Londoners (and many in the colder countries) may not see the sun for quite a long time of the year due to fog, and are thus absolutely dependent on machine time. TYopical countries are seldom foggy; the people see the sun very well. So the situation that prompted Willet to propose advancing the clock does not prevail in these countries.
Bangladesh is not only a tropical country, but is also largely rural-oriented. Most people are accustomed to following sunrise and sunset for their daily schedule of work; they don't sleep during morning light. Even many city-dwellers, who are used to following time in clocks and watches round the year, go out for a morning walk irrespective of whether it's 5, 6 or 7 o' clock. Then why should we introduce an artificial and complex, system of timing?7^ we do that‘in1 this country)’ with an overwhelming Muslim population, making the daily prayer, fasting, seheri and iftar calendar useless for several months, we may face some unpredictable consequences.
Of course, we need to work more during daylight, using the free sunlight and consuming as little energy as possible. To do this, instead of manipulating time, the government can change just the working schedule during April-September; no office or industry will defy that. The working people will have one hour more free time in the afternoon to shop; thus the shop-keepers would have the needed selling time during daylight. The government can opt for tampering with time only if the changed working schedule doesn't work.
MAS. Molla is an occasional contributor to The Daly Star.
Email momas7l@yahoo com