Critical minerals and rare earths

Prelims and Mains

A mineral is called critical when an economy and its armed forces cannot do without it and the supply can be cut, which is a judgement about politics as much as geology. India's list of 2023 names 30, among them lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, the rare earths and the platinum group. For almost all of them the cut would come at the refinery rather than the mine: processed material, not raw ore, is what serves a country in a supply shock, so midstream processing rather than reserves decides resource security. The rare earths are the seventeen metals, the fifteen lanthanides with scandium and yttrium, used in magnets, electronics and defence.

Prelims and Mains

A rare earth magnet is what shrinks an electric motor enough to fit inside a car, and it is the finished material India is least able to make. A sintered magnet is made by aligning rare earth alloy powder in a magnetic field, pressing it and heating it below melting until the grains fuse. Neodymium iron boron 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 them, and the scheme approved on 26 November 2025 funds Indian manufacture. The alternative is an electromagnet, copper coil on an iron core, which large generators have used for a century; in an electric vehicle motor it trades dependence on imported rare earths for losses in efficiency, starting torque and top speed, which is why the cars still need rare earths.

Background reading: The Hindu, 23 Jul 2026: 'Virtual magnet' claims reveal why EVs need their rare-earths (opens in a new tab)

Prelims and Mains

Lithium blocks abroad are lithium bearing ground in other countries that India buys into, through KABIL, Khanij Bidesh India Limited.

• The surest way to be certain of lithium is to hold the ground it lies in.
• KABIL is a joint venture of the National Aluminium Company, Hindustan Copper and Mineral Exploration and Consultancy, and it already holds five blocks in Argentina.
• Argentina, Bolivia and Chile form the lithium triangle, the salt flats that hold most of the world's brine lithium.
• Australia mines lithium from hard rock.

Prelims and Mains

Waste that is already dug up, ground and stacked has had the expensive part of mining done to it. Fly ash, the fine residue of burning coal, and red mud, the alkaline residue of extracting alumina from bauxite, both carry rare earths and other metals, and recovering them supplements mining and cuts the waste burden at once.

See also: Urban mining

Prelims

The sands of India's southern coast carry monazite, the mineral that holds both thorium and rare earths. That double content is why it is handled as a strategic mineral and not a commercial one.

• Exports of monazite go only through IREL (India) Limited.
• The monazite threshold has been 0.00 per cent of total heavy minerals since 2019, so every beach sand mineral deposit sits with government companies.

Prelims and Mains

A District Mineral Foundation (DMF) is a district level body that spends on the welfare of areas and people affected by mining.

• It is funded by contributions from holders of mining leases.
• Foundations were set up after the 2015 amendment of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act.
• Their spending follows the guidelines of the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana (PMKKKY).

Prelims and Mains

The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026 limits what States may levy on minerals.

• Its Section 9D bars a State from taxing mineral rights or mineral bearing land except on conditions the Centre prescribes.
• It follows a nine judge ruling of 2024, which held that royalty is not a tax and that States may tax both mineral rights and the land that holds minerals.
• The dispute is over which legislature holds the field: Entry 50 of the State List lets Parliament limit taxes on mineral rights, while Entry 49 gives States the tax on land.