The (in)Famous Indian Standard Time
“We all know it, we all hate it and yet, we all do it!”
Well, I am talking about the (in)famous Indian Standard Time!
Have you ever wondered the genesis of Indian Standard time? Why are we always beginning meetings and things late?
Let’s start from the beginning!
We do take the usual 9 months to come out. We usually start our pre-school at 3 and our regular schooling at 5. It is not like we have a higher life expectancy than other countries. Yet, somewhere in-between, we have the Indian Standard Time.
In our country, schools start on time. Kids are never late in getting to school. Somewhere from where we get out of school to where we get to adult life, we start getting late for everything.
I have seen people blame colleges for it, saying how the entire concept of college is chilled, relaxed and okay with students being late. But, in my opinion, that’s not it. College classes do start in time. And the schedules do get managed.
In my view, it’s a social and cultural issue. And the thing about the cultural and social issue is that it is made by us. WE THE PEOPLE! We are not the ones who suffer from IST, we are the ones that proliferate it. It’s what most of us have gotten as inheritance, maybe even genetically transmitted.
Of all the things that block our progress, this is gotta be one of the top ones! Things work well only when people do what they say, when they say they will. The best way to break IST is for us to break it individually.
Most of us work on IST because we think others will be too. Others come late because they think you will be too. Just start being on-time, let others expect you to come on-time and soon enough we may actually work on true time.
Be the role model for people around you. That’s the only way social changes happen!
Think of the number of wasted hours when someone makes others wait just because they were on IST! And how much you will enjoy the finer moments if they just started on time. Personal and professional both.
