Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Meghalaya
Roof sheets by the length, paint by the shade, and a house that is built one stage at a time.
Limestone in the east, farms in the west: where Meghalaya's houses come from
A hardware shop sells to the whole district, and these three show where its customers earn their money.
- In Ri Bhoi, Byrnihat has an industrial estate, and bamboo and cane work is a local craft, so bamboo for scaffolds is never far.
- In West Jaintia Hills about 70% of people depend on agriculture, so families there build when the crop is sold.
- In Shillong, Bara Bazaar (Iewduh) has shops for traditional Khasi materials and household items.
Tools for a hardware shop whose customers build in stages and order the night before the truck
Online orders
The committee of the village hall sends its list of cement bags and sheets from the shop's online page the evening before the truck leaves for the hall.
Orders to suppliers
The order for wire mesh and tin sheet for the sheds, ticked off roll by roll as it comes up the hill.
Low stock warnings
A warning on nails and binding wire when a box is nearly gone, so the farmer who comes on a market day does not leave with half his shed.
A house page that follows the walls up, a truck counted on the hill road, and a yellow found again for the gate
The stage a PMAY-G house is at, and what that stage took
Under PMAY-G, Meghalaya had sanctioned 1,85,772 rural houses and completed 1,49,254 of them by July 2025, the rural development ministry says. A sanctioned house is built in instalments, and each instalment follows a stage of the building. At each stage the family asks what it took, and the answer is the cement, the rods and the sheets of that stage, with the date.
The hall's roof, and the treasurer with three pockets of slips
The village hall's money comes from three pockets, and each wants its own receipt for the roof. Open one page for the hall and bill the sheets and nails on it as they go up the slope. The treasurer reads from it each pocket's receipt, and the evening's tally, in one place.
A shade mixed for one house, found again for its gate
The Syiem house has its own colours, and the family comes back a week later for the gate in the same yellow. You find the house's yellow by the name written for it and by its own count, and the gate is not a slightly different yellow from the walls.
A village hall bought in pieces, a bamboo pole that does not come back, and a pig shed that lacks its nails
A village hall bought bag by bag, over many weeks
When the village builds a hall, the dorbar's treasurer buys the cement, the sheets and the paint over many weeks as the walls go up. The cement goes a few bags at a time, and by the roof nobody can say how many bags the hall has taken or how many are still in the yard. The slips for each buy are in different pockets.
A bamboo pole goes out with the order and may not come back
A contractor's order leaves with a few lengths of bamboo for the scaffold and a coil of rope. Nobody writes the poles down, because they are cheap and always at hand. A week later two are missing, and at the end of the month the count in the yard is a little short and the contractor's total is a little unclear.
A pig shed to be put up before market day, with sheet, wire mesh and nails in one trip
A farmer who keeps pigs is putting up a shed and wants tin sheet, wire mesh, a few poles and a kilo or two of nails in one trip, because the walk back is long. The sheet is sold by the length, the mesh by the roll and the nails by the kilo. The nails run out first because nobody counts them, and the farmer goes home to finish the shed without them.
Questions Meghalaya hardware and paint shops ask
Tin sheets and bamboo poles stay in the open yard behind my shop. Can the yard be its own place in my stock?
Yes. Make the yard a place of its own, apart from the shop. What moves from the yard to the counter is noted once, so the two are always counted apart.
Roofing sheets of two thicknesses look alike. Can each be its own item?
Yes. The village hall wants the thick sheet for the noise of heavy rain on a steep roof, and a PMAY-G house may take the thin. Each thickness has its own rate per metre and count, so the thick sheet running out is never hidden by a pile of the thin.
A contractor takes bamboo poles for his scaffold and may not bring them all back. How do I note that?
Put the poles on the contractor's page with the day, as the poles that went. Whatever comes back is counted into the yard's stock again, so the page shows what he took and the stock shows what is home.
The pig farmer comes back for one more kilo of nails before market day. How do I know what is left?
Before market day the pig farmer mends his pens, so he comes for nails, wire and sheet in the same few days. Keep the nails as a weight on the phone, and you tell him in one breath whether the nails, the wire and the sheet for the pen are all here.
Cement from East Jaintia Hills
A Northeast Now survey of 10 December 2020 priced a bag of Topcem cement at Rs 440 to 450 in Meghalaya and Rs 390 to 400 in Assam.
Meghalaya Cements Ltd, maker of Topcem, mines limestone in East Jaintia Hills and produces about 4,600 tons of cement a day, Northeast Now reported in December 2020.