Bagan Time: Assam's Tea Gardens Run an Hour Ahead of India

If you set your watch by Bagan Time in an Assam tea estate, you would be exactly one hour out of step with the rest of the country — and entirely on purpose.

Bagan means garden, and 'Bagan Time' — also called Chaibagan Time or Tea Garden Time — is the unofficial standard followed inside Assam's tea estates.

Crucially, this is not a different time zone in any legal sense.

The practice traces back to British planters in the nineteenth century, and the logic behind it was sound enough that it never died.

For labour-intensive farming that depends entirely on daylight, this is a serious problem.