Advancing Role of US in India's Critical Mineral Diplomacy

On 23 December, Mines Secretary V.L. Kantha Rao announced India's plans to launch the Critical Mineral Mission (CMM) in 2025, bringing together multiple ministries, industries, scientists, and academia in a coordinated effort to secure minerals with ever-growing applications.

- Araudra Singh

On 23 December, Mines Secretary V.L. Kantha Rao announced India's plans to launch the Critical Mineral Mission (CMM) in 2025, bringing together multiple ministries, industries, scientists, and academia in a coordinated effort to secure minerals with ever-growing applications. The mandate of the CMM, first proposed during Finance Minister Sitharaman's Union Budget 2024-2025 speech, would include domestic production, recycling, and overseas acquisition of critical minerals, besides technology development, a skilled workforce, an extended producer responsibility framework, and a financing mechanism.

CMM's directives are reflective of India's aspirations of securing domestic supply chains to mitigate strategic vulnerabilities while also leveraging foreign reserves, technology, and capital vis-à-vis trusted bilateral and multilateral partnerships.

While resource-rich countries like Argentina and Australia, among others, have often been discussed vis-à-vis India's critical mineral diplomacy, one country, albeit not minerals-lush, yet potentially key to India's CMM is the US—largely missing from the discourse.