Did You Know?
Bangladesh Put Its Clocks Forward for the Summer and Took Them Back on New Year's Eve
Bangladesh Standard Time is UTC+6, calculated from the 90th meridian — a line that runs through the Manikganj district, just west of Dhaka. That makes Dhaka one of the most accurately positioned capitals in the world. Its clock sits within a couple of minutes of its own solar noon.
For six and a half months in 2009, it didn't.
On 19 June 2009, for the first time in the country's history, Bangladesh introduced daylight saving time. Clocks went forward one hour at 11pm, moving the country to UTC+7. It was done by executive decision, without legislation, to address a chronic electricity shortage — peak demand exceeded supply by roughly 1,200 megawatts, and blackouts were routine.
It did not go well, and the reasons are worth listing, because they are all about coordination rather than daylight.
Bangladesh's UTC+6 already sat awkwardly between India on UTC+5:30 and Myanmar on UTC+6:30. Moving to UTC+7 made cross-border scheduling harder, not easier. Public clocks, schools and markets were never systematically synchronised. Prayer times are fixed by the sun and did not move with the clock. Students and teachers found themselves setting off before sunrise. And whatever electricity the change saved was offset by hot weather in the days that followed.
The clock: the ending belongs in a museum of administration.
Daylight saving was originally scheduled to end on 30 September 2009. After sustained public complaint, the government pushed the end date back — not forward, back — to 31 December.
Which means Bangladesh spent October, November and December on summer time, in winter, having extended a measure introduced to save summer electricity into the coldest, darkest quarter of the year. The clocks finally went back at 23:59 on New Year's Eve.
A repeat was planned for 31 March 2010. On 22 March, nine days before it was due to start, the cabinet cancelled it, citing public interest and concern for schoolchildren who would have had to wake before dawn to reach school by seven.
Bangladesh has not moved its clocks since.
Sources
- timeanddate.com, *Bangladesh Starts Daylight Saving Time on June 19, 2009*
- timeanddate.com, *Bangladesh's Daylight Saving Time Ends December 31*
- timeanddate.com, *No Daylight Saving Time in Bangladesh in 2010* (22 March 2010 cancellation; school children reason; a 1,200 MW shortfall)
- Wikipedia, *Bangladesh Standard Time* (savings offset by warm weather)
- IANA tz database, *asia* (2009 change by government and cabinet decisions); timeanddate.com (India UTC+5:30, Myanmar UTC+6:30)