Shillong, October 14, 2026 — A decade after India mandated that mining districts set aside royalty revenue for local welfare, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma stood at the State Convention Centre, Shillong, to take stock of what those funds have actually built — and how much further they need to go.

Addressing a programme marking the 10th anniversary of the District Mineral Foundation (DMF), Sangma cited figures that frame both the achievement and the gap. Meghalaya's DMF has mobilised ₹181 crore, sanctioned 923 projects, and completed 542 of them — classrooms, health facilities, drinking water systems, monsoon-proof footbridges, and quarry restoration works including water conservation dams and tree plantation drives. Nearly four in ten sanctioned projects remain unfinished. The CM's message to districts was direct: no more delay.

Why Meghalaya's mining story is unlike any other state's

The DMF was born out of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015, which required all mining lease holders across India to contribute a share of royalties into district-level trusts for local area development. In most states, that meant large corporate lease holders writing cheques. In Meghalaya, the picture is far more complex.

Coal and other minerals here sit under land owned not by the state but by communities — a traditional tenure system that makes the sector simultaneously a livelihood engine and a regulatory puzzle. Years of largely unregulated extraction drew national scrutiny, and the push toward 'scientific and sustainable mining practices' (as Sangma put it) is both an environmental imperative and a political balancing act. Any tightening of rules touches community livelihoods directly, which explains why the Chief Minister was careful to frame reform and support as two sides of the same coin.

From welfare spending to a 'regenerative economy'

The sharper signal in Sangma's address was a pivot in ambition. The first decade of DMF was, broadly, about fixing what extraction had broken — restoring quarry land, connecting villages, stocking health posts. The next phase, he argued, should be about building income-generating assets that outlast the mines themselves.

He pointed to early models already operating on the ground: an eco-tourism park and a value-added bee products unit at Nengmandalgre, silkworm rearing and a weaving centre in Ri Bhoi, and a district emporium for local products. Tourism, food processing, and entrepreneurship, he said, are the sectors that can convert a finite mineral stock into a durable economic base. The framing — 'turn our mineral wealth into a regenerative economy' — signals that Meghalaya is trying to write a post-extraction story before the extraction is over, a sequence many resource-rich regions attempt too late.

Union government in the frame — Kishan Reddy tagged

Sangma's post tagged Union Coal Minister G. Kishan Reddy and the Coal Ministry, a deliberate signal that the state is looking for central alignment on the next phase of DMF deployment. The National Mineral Policy 2019 had already pushed for community benefit sharing and scientific mining; what districts in Meghalaya now need is policy clarity on how DMF funds can be structured into livelihood endowments rather than one-off infrastructure spends.

With nearly 381 projects still incomplete, the immediate test is administrative — ensuring fund utilisation rates rise and contractors deliver. But the larger bet Sangma is making is strategic: that a state whose mining sector operates under community land ownership is uniquely positioned to model an inclusive, locally-rooted mineral economy, if the governance catches up.

Meghalaya has a decade of DMF data to learn from. The question now is whether the next decade's projects get finished — and whether the ones that generate income outlast the ones that merely spent it.