India operates on Indian Standard Time (IST), which is 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+5:30). Despite spanning nearly 3,000 km from east to west, the entire country follows a single timezone and does not observe daylight saving time.
All major cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad follow IST. India shares its timezone offset with Sri Lanka.
India's single timezone means sunrise in the far east (Arunachal Pradesh) can be nearly 2 hours earlier than in the far west (Gujarat). The half-hour offset was adopted in 1947 to avoid the colonial-era timezone that matched London. India is the world's most populous democracy and has the world's largest film industry by number of films produced (Bollywood).