What's with India Time?

You may have been surprised when you first saw the Chennai time on my blog. Sure it's way off from the time in the US, but what's with that half hour? It always bothered me, too, but I only recently bothered to ask anyone.

The answer is quite simple: The land of India stretches over what would normally be two time zones, so the western part should be one hour later than the eastern part. But the decision was made--I don't know any details here--to have the same current time throughout the country. Obviously, a half-hour compromise on each side was the most fair way to go.

By the way, India doesn't have daylight savings time, so, now that the U.S has turned its clocks back, we're ten and a half hours ahead of US Eastern Standard Time.