Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
Digging into India’s critical minerals dash
India is on the lookout for critical mineral supplies. Like much of the world, it wants to shrug off any dependency on China. And so, newspapers in the country are flush with details about mineral finds here, MoUs with X country over there, and also with Y country over there.
Headlines apart, given how gnarled geopolitics over critical minerals is right now, how is India’s search unfolding? Well. Today, we finally published the introductory piece in what will be a three-part series on India’s search for critical minerals.
In a nutshell, CarbonCopy and I found that geopolitics is just one part of the story. Securing critical mineral supplies is not enough to insulate the country from supply risks. If Chinese EV firms reprise their country’s success in solar panels—or if Indian firms continue sourcing components from China instead of buying them from Indian manufacturers—the country’s dependence on Chinese supply chains will continue. In other words, to meaningfully insulate itself, India has to develop its own EV value chain.
Read our part one here. Part Two (geopolitics) and Part three (EV manufacturing) will get into more detail.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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