What Happened?
On 29 January, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 16,300-crore National Critical Minerals Mission (NCMM), with a total outlay of Rs. 34,300-crore (The additional Rs. 18,000-crore is expected in investments from Indian Public Sector Undertakings) spread over seven years.
Why It Matters to India?
Critical minerals are vital for India’s industrial ambitions and clean-energy transition, but much like the rest of the world, India is highly import-dependent, in large part on China (which has instituted a near monopoly across key segments of Global Value Chains) for a majority of them. In turn, this has created a strategic imperative for New Delhi to seek ‘mineral security,’ through creation of a domestic ecosystem as well as integration into GVCs.
Although India is home to the world’s fifth largest reserve of Rare Earth Minerals (which despite the name are quite abundant), the domestic mining sector is relatively small and has grown sluggishly when compared to China, Australia, Brazil, etc. At present, India lags behind these countries across all stages of the critical mineral GVCs – which generally consists of exploration, mining, extraction/processing, and manufacturing. For instance, industrial scale metal extraction facilities for critical minerals are close to non-existent in India and the country is yet to gain the technical knowledge for next-generation metal refininement technologies such as vapor metallurgy.
