Express your voice

8226; There have always been two approaches8212;positive and negative8212;of looking at things 8216;Hoping the new year will usher chan...

8226; There have always been two approaches8212;positive and negative8212;of looking at things 8216;Hoping the new year will usher change8212;for the better8217;, January 1, and the year 2005 is no exception. No doubt the year gone by saw tsunami, earthquakes and bomb blasts; we also had our share of train accidents, floods and drought and as usual our public life has been dominated by money-grabbing politicians and corrupt officials. This was the year when we made grand plans and schemes of removing poverty and bringing empowerment8212;political as well as economic8212;to the poor and the neglected. It was a time when a lot of sleaze churned up in public and constitutional institutions and ambitious schemes remained stagnant courtesy the UPA8217;s coalition partners.

Yet India as a society and a nation proved that it knows and finds ways to surge ahead. The world knows we can rise from the ashes and shake off every violence, every shackle inflicted on us. As a fast-growing politico-economic power we cannot digress from our course of growth, prosperity and sense of purpose. Our industry, agriculture and financial institutions have proved that we can achieve an 8 per cent GDP growth.8212;Ved Guliani

8226; 8216;To one who outmeasures space, outlasts time8217; January 1 makes interesting reading about cosmic time under Hindu mythology. But for a normal human being, measure of normal time and the system of calendar-year are also very important. The metric measure of time should be introduced with each day having 10 metric hours instead of the present 24 hours. Each metric hour may have 100 metric minutes with each metric minute of 100 metric seconds, thus making a day of 100,000 metric seconds instead of present 86,400 seconds.

The idea of a new Henry8217;s calendar which would make same week-day for every date of each year should also be considered. Rather Henry8217;s formula of having months of both 30 and 31 days can be further modified to have 11 months of 30 days each with just six days per week. Twelfth month of December may have an extra week of six days in leap years and five days in non-leap years.

The Indian Government should change its clock to systematic and daylight energy-saving time-zone of GMT plus 6 hours instead of present GMT plus 5 and a half hours. Except India and few other countries like Nepal, most global countries have their time-zones separated from standard GMT time in multiples of one complete hour.

8212;Madhu Agrawal