Intersectionsatlife

  In May 1997, I became a banker in the true sense. I was working with the big ledgers, and tallying up figures manually. Pure grunt work.   My salary was all of Nu 6380, a very handsome amount then. (Before this, I had worked for a year in a private company, which paid Nu 4000 monthly). After completing my one-year probationary period, my salary jumped to 8500 per month, and my immediate thought was: I have a stable job with a great salary, and I need a car! So, I started putting away whatever I could after surviving on the least-costing food; my aim was to be able to buy a car within the next three years, with my own savings. I envisioned myself driving a sleek, new vehicle, enjoying the freedom and convenience it would bring. So, with determination, I embarked on my three-year journey of saving. Needless to say, the journey did not unfold quite as I had imagined. The Struggle  Saving for a car seemed like a straightforward plan. I set aside a portion of my salary, cutt...

  COVID-19 arrived in Bhutan in 2020, when an American citizen tested positive for the virus on 5th March 2020. The man came to Bhutan as a tourist and arrived at the Paro International Airport on 2nd March 2020. Ever since then, COVID has imposed its effects on the Bhutanese populace in myriad ways. First came the lockdown V1: imposed from 10th August 2020, for 21 days. Another lockdown started on 23rd December 2020. And it went on. Around the same time,  Monetary Measures (MM)  started coming into effect, with the SOP for MM1 coming out on 14th April 2020, which  deferred  all loans as of February 2020 by three months, and waived off the interest for the performing ones for three months (April – June 2020) meaning the interest burden was taken over by the government and banks in a 50:50 ratio. Along with deferring loans, other steps were taken as well, some of which are: deferred payment of sales tax and customs duty on essential items (March to June 2020), an...