National Security Dialogue | Critical Minerals and India: Strategic Dependencies and Defence Preparedness

India’s defence modernisation and industrial expansion is inextricably tied to a respectable provide of significant minerals. Evolved militia platforms, from fighter aircrafts and precision-guided munitions to radars, satellites, and digital battle methods, all count on a range of strategic minerals that are sourced by highly concentrated global provide chains. China’s dominance all the plot in which by the processing and refining of several of those offers it significant leverage over global manufacturing networks. In response, international locations are shifting to rating home resources, fuelling a broader wave of useful resource nationalism. The tech battle between the US and China has demonstrated how main powers are increasingly prepared to make expend of export controls, sanctions, and regulatory instruments as devices of business coercion. For India, this raises concerns in regards to the cascading effects on defence manufacturing timelines, upkeep cycles, and broader industrial ability.

This month’s version of the Nationwide Safety Dialogue will ogle how serious minerals are reshaping the calculus of defence preparedness. This can explore the selections India have to recollect to rating its mineral provide chains amidst growing geopolitical opponents.

Driving Questions:

1. What are the most serious chokepoints in India’s serious mineral provide chains for key defence platforms?
2. What institutional and regulatory reforms are wished to toddle extraction, significantly for deep-seated minerals in politically advanced terrains?
3. As India develops a Nationwide Excessive Mineral Stockpile, what ought to quiet be the considerations for composition, scale, and management given competing national priorities?
4. What role can defence procurement protection play in stimulating home serious mineral processing?
5. What lessons can India scheme from latest global provide chain disruptions to greater insulate its defence industrial contaminated?
6. How can India leverage its membership of Pax Silica and FORGE (beforehand the Minerals Safety Partnership) to advance its goals and what are the boundaries of plurilateral frameworks in buffering in opposition to direct-directed provide shocks?

Venue Take care of

Convention Hall 1, Dr Ambedkar Global Centre