Last month, during my trip to India, I discovered that the entire country was on a single time zone. This seemed like a very sensible idea to me. Now, I come across this piece in The Washington Post advocating a single time zone for the whole world. This certainly would have made it easier finding a time to Skype with family.
‘The plan was strikingly simple. Rather than try to regulate a variety of time zones all around the world, we should instead opt for something far easier: Let’s destroy all these time zones and instead stick with one big “Universal Time.”‘
But here’s another point of view:
peakmemory 
Whole of India on the same time zone? Then why is New Delhi on a time zone that differs in full hours AND half an hour from GMT time?
Yes, all of India, including Delhi, is on the same time zone, which is 5:30 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. Here is a link with the Indian time zone map:
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/ist
Here is a nice blog post on the topic
http://ourdelhistruggle.com/2009/11/10/india-time-zone/
FYI: there is also something called “Pyongyang Time” (when North Korea introduced its own time zone):
http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/north-korea-new-time-zone.html
Thank you for this! I find it rather weird. That second article about Nepal being offset by 15 minutes from India blew my mind. Before I read about New Delhi I was convinced all time zones were hour zones.