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Critical minerals and rare earths

India's weakness in critical minerals is not the ground but the refinery: China leads the refining of 19 of 20 strategic minerals, and its 2025 export controls showed what that means. India answers with a stockpile under the National Critical Mineral Mission, a magnet manufacturing scheme now in bidding, lithium blocks sought abroad, and pilot plants pulling rare earths out of fly ash and red mud.

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2026: rare earth elements and the National Critical Mineral Mission
Prelims 2025: the Minerals Security Partnership and India's critical mineral endowment
Prelims 2025: rare earths in flat screens, and their phosphorescence
Prelims 2025: countries and resources, including Chile and lithium
Prelims 2022: monazite as a source of rare earths, and its thorium
Prelims 2015: uses and composition of fly ash from coal power plants

Why refining, not mining, is the chokepoint

Across copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and the rare earths, the top three refining countries held 86 per cent of the market in 2024.
China leads the refining of 19 of 20 strategic minerals, and its 2025 export controls on rare earths reached industries from electric vehicles to defence.
Processed material, not raw ore, is what serves a country in a supply shock, so it is midstream processing rather than reserves that decides resource security.
India has the ore but little capacity to turn it into finished material such as magnets.

How India is answering

The National Critical Mineral Mission is India's umbrella programme for critical mineral security.
₹500 crore has been seeded under it for stockpiling.
KABIL (Khanij Bidesh India Ltd), a joint venture of National Aluminium Company, Hindustan Copper and Mineral Exploration and Consultancy, acquires mineral assets abroad.
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile form the lithium triangle.
Recovering critical materials from industrial waste supplements primary mining and cuts the waste burden.

Rare earth magnets, and the scheme to make them

6,000 tonnes a yearIntegrated magnet capacity aimed at in India

5 beneficiariesUp to 1,200 tonnes each, through global bidding

7 yearsTwo to build the plant, five of incentives

The scheme was approved on 26 November 2025; figures from the Press Information Bureau release of 13 August 2026

Neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) is the strongest permanent magnet in wide use.
Samarium cobalt is weaker but holds its magnetism at high temperature, so defence and aerospace use it.
Electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, electronics and defence all run on these magnets.

Critical minerals: Minerals essential to the economy and to national security whose supply is at risk, usually because refining is concentrated in a few countries.

rare earths: The seventeen metals, the fifteen lanthanides together with scandium and yttrium, used in magnets, electronics and defence.

midstream processing: Refining and separating ores into usable materials, the stage that sits between mining and manufacturing.

sintered rare earth permanent magnet: A magnet made by aligning rare earth alloy powder in a magnetic field, pressing it and heating it below its melting point until the grains fuse into a solid block.

fly ash: The fine residue left from burning coal in a thermal power plant.

red mud: The alkaline residue left after alumina is extracted from bauxite.

lithium block: A demarcated area of ground licensed for lithium exploration or mining, which secures supply at the source rather than on the market.

What has happened

11 Sep 2026
India said it was in talks to acquire lithium blocks in Australia and Chile, and was seeking five more in Argentina, where it already holds five.
- E-waste recycling could meet 25 to 30 per cent of India's critical minerals needs.
The Hindu, 11 Sep 2026: India in talks to acquire lithium blocks in Australia, Chile; eyes five more in Argentina (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 11 Sep 2026: Critical Minerals Key to India's Energy Security, Industrial Competitiveness and National Security: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh (opens in a new tab)
20 Aug 2026
Two indigenous pilot plants in Odisha, built by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT) with National Aluminium Company support, were set to recover rare earths from industrial waste.
- The first of its kind plant at Bhubaneswar takes coal fly ash, yielding alumina, calcium silicate, quartz and a residue rich in rare earths including scandium.
- The second works on red mud, for ferro-titanium and iron alongside rare earths.
The Hindu, 20 Aug 2026: Pilot plants in Odisha set to extract valuable rare earth elements from industrial wastes (opens in a new tab)
13 Aug 2026
Twenty bids came in under the scheme for sintered rare earth permanent magnets, and the technical bids were opened.
PIB, 13 Aug 2026: Scheme for sintered rare earth permanent magnets attracts 20 bids (opens in a new tab)
4 Aug 2026
A column made the case that strategic power over critical minerals lies in refining rather than in reserves.
- The European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act answers with 2030 benchmarks of 10 per cent domestic extraction, 40 per cent processing and 25 per cent recycling.
- The United States is racing to build magnets without Chinese inputs.
The Hindu, 4 Aug 2026: Critical minerals: the foundation of strategic power (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 5 Aug 2026: Essential stockpiling for a mineral-driven future (opens in a new tab)