India wants to legalize Indian Standard Time. Here's why
India wants to legalize the Indian Standard Time (IST), as it gets more cautious about security and cyber-attacks, areas where every second matters. Once it does, it'll be mandatory for all service providers across the country to take time from India's official timekeeper, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Currently, the time on gadgets used by Indians is primarily sourced from America's Network Time Protocol.
Legalizing IST will boost operational efficiency, reduce confusions
Legalizing IST will streamline, cut down confusions and the risk of errors in several key operations. For instance, if a customer is booking a train ticket in Tatkal and is using network time but the Indian Railways is operating on IST sourced from NPL, he might see no tickets on logging in, courtesy the lack of coordination in the two times.
Indian law doesn't currently recognize IST as nation's legal time
Legal Metrology Act, 2009, the Indian law for enforcing standards of weights and measures and regulating trade accordingly, does not currently recognize IST as the nation's legal time. Once IST gets legalized, users will have to compulsorily use only the NPL-generated time, thus realizing India's long-held ambition of one nation, one time.
ISRO, IAF, airports and banks use NPL-generated IST
"When it comes to security, including defense and cyber security, ATM and online transactions, even seconds make a difference. We are pushing for nation, one time, so there's only one source of Indian Standard Time," Ashish Agarwal, a scientist at NPL, said. As of now, only key organizations including the ISRO, the Indian Air Force, airports and several banks use NPL-generated IST.
