"Critical Mineral Security Emerges as India's Core Industrial Strategy Priority"
Critical Minerals
minerals essential for clean energy, defence, and advanced manufacturing, with supply chains concentrated in few countries.
Midstream Processing
refining and purification of raw mineral ore into high-purity industrial inputs; India's primary capability gap.
Critical minerals — lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, and rare earth elements — have historically sat at the periphery of India's resource governance, overshadowed by coal and conventional metals. Their strategic centrality emerged with the twin forces of decarbonisation and digitalisation: every electric vehicle, wind turbine, solar panel, semiconductor, and advanced defence system depends on these inputs. The NCERT-era framing of resource geopolitics centred on oil and strategic minerals in Cold War contexts; today, the same logic of stockpiling, supply-chain control, and diplomatic alignment applies to lithium and rare earths.
India's governance of these minerals was long constrained by the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, which classified lithium, beryllium, tantalum, and niobium as 'atomic minerals', effectively barring private sector exploration. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2023 was the watershed correction — it delisted several minerals from the atomic category, opened them to private sector exploration through auctioned licences, and reoriented India's minerals governance toward market-driven discovery. Entry 54 of the Union List provides Parliament exclusive jurisdiction over mines and mineral development, giving the Centre constitutional authority to architect this policy centrally.
India's G-20 Presidency further elevated critical minerals as a multilateral priority, embedding supply chain resilience in global economic governance and helping India build coalitions with mineral-rich partner nations. The subsequent Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), which India joined as a member, formalised this diplomatic architecture.
The global supply picture for critical minerals is acutely concentrated. The average market share of the top three refining countries for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and rare earth elements rose to 86% in 2024, up from around 82% in 2020. China is the leading refiner in 19 out of 20 strategic minerals, with an average market share of approximately 70%, making mineral access a geopolitical variable rather than a purely commercial one. China's rare earth export controls announced in 2025 crystallised this risk across energy, automotive, defence, aerospace, and semiconductor sectors simultaneously.
The demand trajectory compounds the supply risk. A 30% copper supply shortfall is projected by 2035 based on the current project pipeline. Lithium markets are expected to move into deficit by the 2030s as EV demand accelerates. …
Consider the following statements:
I.India has joined the Minerals Security Partnership as a member.
II.India is a resource-rich country in all the 30 critical minerals that it has identified.
III.The Parliament in 2023 has amended the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 empowering the Central Government to exclusively auction mining lease and composite license for certain critical minerals.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
Which of the following statements about Rare Earth Elements (REEs) and Critical Minerals is/are correct?
1.Modern technological innovations including Artificial Intelligence, robotics and space exploration extensively utilise Rare Earth Elements (REEs).
2.China has the highest share in mining of REEs followed by India.
3.The Government of India launched the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) in 2025 to establish a robust framework for self-reliance in the critical mineral sector.
4.Rare Earth Elements are a set of 13 metallic elements.
Select the answer using the code given below:
Consider the following pairs:
Country : Resource-rich in
I.Botswana : Diamond
II.Chile : Lithium
III.Indonesia : Nickel
In how many of the above rows is the given information correctly matched?
Consider the following statements regarding critical minerals and India's policy response:
1.China is the leading refiner in 19 out of 20 strategic minerals with an average market share of approximately 70%.
2.The MMDR Amendment Act, 2023 brought lithium and rare earth elements under the Atomic Energy Act's restricted list for the first time.
3.KABIL is a joint venture of NALCO, HCL, and MECL mandated to acquire overseas critical mineral assets.
4.India's cumulative critical energy transition mineral demand under a net-zero scenario is projected to be lower than under a current policy pathway.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
Assertion (A): India remains strategically vulnerable in critical minerals despite holding significant domestic reserves of cobalt, copper, graphite, and nickel.
Reason (R): The critical gap lies in midstream processing and refining capacity, where China dominates global output for most strategic minerals.
Which of the following is correct?
Which of the following correctly describes the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP)?
Consider the following statements about India's critical mineral supply situation:
1.India is self-sufficient in lithium, which is abundantly available in Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir.
2.Recycling is projected to potentially meet up to a quarter of India's copper and graphite demand by mid-century.
3.The current global copper project pipeline points to a potential 30% supply shortfall by 2035.
4.Rare Earth Elements comprise a set of 17 metallic elements.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
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