What do we know about Day Light Saving/DST

I am sure everyone must’ve heard about Day light saving at-least once in their life time, But the question here is how many of you have actually thought of DST or have tried understanding what exactly does it mean and when do we actually use it in our life. For those, who would love to read about time change in real life and about DST this article is for you!!

First things first, we all have heard through ought our life that time cannot be changed or can be controlled by anyone. I would like break this to you that they weren’t right every time. Time can be changed and can be controlled for good reasons at few places on earth. Since we live in a tropical region and also tropic of cancer passes through our nation and also through most of the Asian countries DST is not considerably used.

Most of the European and North American countries do use DST and they Change their time twice a year, yes you heard it right Time is controlled and is changed. Now how do they do it and why do they do it?

We all know that during winters the nights are long and days are slightly shorter when compared. Time is changed / adjusted accordingly in respective countries. For Ex: in Lithuania (Vilnius) clocks are changed/adjusted during summer month as EET (Eastern European Time) to move an hour of day light from morning to the evening so that the evening light is used effectively (DST) and clocks are again adjusted back to the normal when the summer is over and is almost autumn. Clocks are usually changed on the last Sunday of March at 3 am and again are changed on last Sunday of October at 4 am.

Asian and other African Countries do not observe these changes because the amount of night and day light are equally divided ie 12 hrs of night and 12 hrs of day. Whereas countries which are near to North Pole and South Pole observe drastic changes in the amount of sun light they receive every year. Ex: A place in the Alaska Region (Town of Barrow) continuously remains under darkness for consecutive 30 nights, which is also called a month long “Polar night” and Sun only rises after a month long night in this region. Please mind that Alaska lies in the extreme end of North Pole.

There have been ample amount of discussion about when was the DST started and who actually started it and what was the reason behind it. The whole idea of DST was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin during his Sojourn as an American delegate to Paris in 1784 in an essay “An Economical Project” Later Europe started using this idea of using Natural light more when Germany popularized DST. It occurred that Germany was just 2 years (1916) into the WW I with the allied powers following which Clocks in Germany & Austria were turned 1 hour ahead. This gave them more efficient results as they used more of natural sun light in the evening and the usage of Artificial light which consumed a lot of fuel dramatically decreased.

Lately there are quite a few interesting discussions about the pros and cons of using DST as permanent time everywhere. Pros being there’s more sunlight to enjoy in the evening, gradual decrease in the crime rate, minimized artificial energy consumption, partial increase in the revenue earned and Cons being increased traffic accidents and partial changes in circadian rhythm of human beings.

Recently In 2019, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced to Congress the "Sunshine Protection Act", a bill to permit states to observe permanent DST. The new permanent DST law was retracted within the year and is still under observation.