Context

• Three years ago, at the start of India’s G20 presidency, critical minerals were not central to strategic policy.
• Minerals such as lithium remained classified as atomic minerals, restricting private participation.
• Recent policy reforms and the Union Budget mark a decisive transformation: critical minerals are now integral to India’s industrial strategy, energy transition, and geopolitical positioning.
• The national focus has shifted from policy formulation to large-scale execution, emphasising speed, depth, and technological capability. 

The Policy Shift: From Peripheral Concern to Strategic Priority

• Emergence of a Comprehensive Framework
  • India has established a structured framework to strengthen mineral security.
  • A list of 30 critical minerals has been identified, royalty rates rationalised, and private exploration liberalised.
  • In January 2025, the government launched the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) with a ₹16,300 crore outlay, signalling long-term commitment.
  • This framework places India among countries pursuing resource resilience through coordinated planning and investment.
• The Execution Challenge
  • Despite policy clarity, execution remains complex. Mineral discovery and development require sustained capital and long gestation periods.
  • More critically, global processing capacity is highly concentrated, with China controlling up to 90% for several key minerals.
  • This dominance creates vulnerabilities in global supply chains.
  • Therefore, India’s strategy must extend beyond mining to strengthening domestic refining, value addition, and downstream integration.

India’s Existing Capabilities and Industrial Potential

• According to the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, domestic industries already produce high-purity copper, graphite, rare earth oxides, tin, and titanium, often exceeding 99.9% purity.
• These capabilities demonstrate technical competence in high-purity processing.
• However, production volumes remain limited and largely oriented toward conventional industries.
• Meeting the demands of clean technologies, defence manufacturing, and advanced electronics requires technological upgrading, capacity expansion, and deeper refining.
• Established strengths in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and textiles provide transferable skills for scaling complex mineral processing.

Priority Areas for Effective Implementation

• Creating Domestic Demand for Processed Minerals
  • Budget 2026 advances implementation by removing import duties on capital goods used in mineral processing, easing the burden of high capex investements.
  • Yet investor confidence depends primarily on assured domestic demand.
  • Government initiatives promoting electric vehicles, batteries, solar modules, and wind turbines create an opportunity for backward integration, but delays increase uncertainty for midstream processors.
  • Expanding the deployment of domestically manufactured clean technologies would stimulate demand for processed minerals, strengthen upstream mining, and deepen industrial ecosystems.
• Adopting an AI-First Approach to Exploration
  • The NCMM targets 1,200 exploration projects by FY2031, supported by tax deductions for exploration expenditure on nine critical minerals, including previously restricted elements such as beryllium, tantalum, lithium, and niobium.
  • Exploration, however, remains inherently risky and capital-intensive.
  • An AI-first approach can significantly enhance prospectivity analysis and reduce uncertainty.
  • Aligning the IndiaAI Mission, the National Geospatial Policy, and Mission Anveshan can strengthen the use of geospatial analytics and seismic AI tools.
• Leveraging Geopolitical Disruption for Technological Sovereignty
  • The weaponisation of rare earth magnets and battery supply chains in 2025 exposed systemic fragility in global industrial networks.
  • India’s initiatives, including rare earth corridors and reduced import duties on monazite sands, reflect efforts to build technological sovereignty.
  • To succeed, states must utilise existing infrastructure and skilled manpower to serve global markets, generate employment, and strengthen regional economies.

The Importance of International Partnerships

• Domestic reforms must be complemented by strategic global engagement.
• India should deepen partnerships with technologically advanced countries such as Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and European nations.
• These countries possess advanced mineral processing and component manufacturing expertise.
• Encouraging firms from these regions to establish operations in India will require regulatory certainty, strong legal safeguards, research collaboration, and predictable market access.
• Institutional mechanisms such as the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement provide a framework for structured cooperation.
• Financial incentives, including the ₹7,280 crore scheme for rare earth permanent magnets, must be supported by long-term stability and transparent governance to foster durable international collaboration.

Conclusion

• India’s repositioning of critical minerals marks a structural shift in its development strategy.
• By prioritising mineral security, expanding domestic processing, encouraging demand creation, adopting AI-driven exploration, and strengthening global partnerships, India aims to build a resilient and integrated ecosystem.
• Sustained inter-ministerial coordination, proactive state leadership, and technological advancement will determine success.
• In a volatile global environment, leadership in critical minerals will depend not only on resource availability but on coherent execution, innovation, and strategic foresight.

Context

• It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities.
• The phrase captures India’s economic trajectory between 2014 and 2025, a period marked by visible prosperity alongside deepening distress.
• While narratives of growth and declining inequality dominate public discourse, patterns of income mobility, vulnerability, and distributional change reveal a more complex reality.
• The dominant trend over the decade points toward rising downward mobility, uneven upward mobility, and persistent structural inequality shaped by caste, religion, and geography.

Understanding Income Mobility: Concept and Method

• Defining Mobility
  • Households are grouped into three categories based on 2014 per capita income: top 10 percent, next 40 percent, and bottom 50 percent.
  • Mobility is measured relative to this benchmark: movement upward, downward, or remaining unchanged. This framework captures shifts in economic position rather than isolated income levels.
• Data and Periodisation
  • The analysis relies on real per capita income data from the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (2014–2025), structured as a balanced panel.
  • The decade is divided into two phases, 2014–19 and 2019–24, to assess shifts around the 2019 general election.
  • This approach enables assessment of longitudinal trends, election cycles, and structural shifts.

National Trends: A Tilt Toward Decline

• Downward mobility nearly doubled from 14 percent in 2015 to 26.8 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, the proportion of households remaining in the same income group fell from over 70 percent to below half.
• Although upward mobility rose from 14.1 percent to 23.5 percent, it consistently lagged behind decline. By 2025, more than one in four households were worse off relative to 2014.
• The balance of movement increasingly favoured descent rather than ascent, reflecting growing economic insecurity, fragile household resilience, and widening income dispersion.
• The pattern suggests that aggregate growth has not translated into broad-based progress.

Rural–Urban Divide: Uneven Gains

• Rural India: Persistent Vulnerability
  • Rural areas experienced sharper deterioration. By 2025, nearly 29 percent of rural households had slipped below their 2014 income rank.
  • The steepest fall occurred during 2014–19, with continued instability thereafter. Limited diversification, dependence on agriculture, and stress in the informal sector intensified rural fragility.
• Urban India: Relative Advantage, Limited Assurance
  • Urban households fared relatively better, with stronger upward mobility and slower increases in decline.
  • Yet downward mobility rose steadily even in cities. Gains were concentrated in specific sectors and regions, reinforcing regional disparities.
  • Urban advantage did not eliminate volatility; it merely moderated it.

Caste as a Structural Determinant of Mobility

• Downward mobility increased across all caste groups, with sharper rises among OBC and SC households.
• By 2025, roughly a quarter or more of these households were worse off than in 2014.
• Upward mobility improved for Unreserved groups and OBCs but remained limited for SC households, reflecting constrained social mobility and reduced access to asset ownership and quality education.
• Scheduled Tribes displayed comparatively lower downward mobility and occasional stronger upward gains, possibly linked to targeted interventions.

Religious Inequalities in Mobility

• Downward mobility rose among all major religious groups, with pronounced increases among Hindu and Muslim households.
• Upward mobility grew more steadily for Sikh and Christian households in earlier years, though momentum weakened later.
• Muslim households exhibited weaker upward mobility relative to Hindus, indicating barriers to economic ascent.
• The pattern reflects constraints rooted in discrimination, limited opportunity expansion, and uneven access to employment networks.

Political and Economic Turning Points and The Broader Implications

• Political and Economic Turning Points
  • The 2019 general election consolidated power for the Bharatiya Janata Party, marking a decisive political moment. Soon after, the COVID-19 crisis generated widespread humanitarian and economic disruption.
  • Prolonged stress in agriculture and informal employment weakened recovery, exposing limited policy responsiveness and gaps in social protection.
  • The absence of a coherent strategy to revive employment-intensive sectors slowed upward income shifts.
• The Broader Implications: Mobility and Social Stability
  • An economy where downward mobility outpaces upward movement risks eroding social stability. When inequality solidifies into reduced mobility, aspiration yields to frustration.
  • Visible affluence among a minority contrasts sharply with expanding precarity among vulnerable groups.
  • Static poverty metrics fail to capture this churn; mobility analysis reveals lived volatility and growing distributional stress.

Conclusion

• Between 2014 and 2025, India’s economic landscape combined expansion with regression. Downward mobility rose more sharply than upward mobility, particularly in rural areas and among historically marginalised communities.
• Caste, religion, geography, and local inequality continue to shape economic life chances.
• Sustainable progress requires strengthening public health, expanding employment-intensive growth, investing in education, and reinforcing social protection.
• Addressing discrimination is integral to restoring mobility and renewing faith in economic progress.
• Without reversing entrenched inequality, the promise of upward mobility will remain uneven, fragile, and uncertain.

About Celiac Disease:

• It is an inherited autoimmune condition where the immune system reacts to gluten, sometimes causing damage to the small intestine.
  • Gluten is a protein found in foods containing wheat, barley, or rye.
• In celiac disease, eating gluten triggers an immune response to the gluten protein in small intestine.
• Over time, this reaction can damage small intestine's lining and prevent it from absorbing nutrients. This condition is called malabsorption.
• The intestinal damage often causes symptoms such as diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, bloating, or anemia.
• It also can lead to serious complications if it is not managed or treated.
• In children, malabsorption can affect growth and development in addition to gastrointestinal symptoms.
• It can develop at any age after people start consuming gluten.
• It is estimated to affect 1 in 100 people worldwide.
• There's no definite cure for celiac disease. But for most people, following a strict gluten-free diet can help manage symptoms and help the intestines heal.

About Vitamin B3:

• Vitamin B3, or Niacin, is a water-soluble vitamin.
• Niacin is naturally present in many foods, added to some food products, and available as a dietary supplement.
• There are two main chemical forms of niacin:
  • nicotinic acid
  • niacinamide (sometimes called nicotinamide)
• Your body gets niacin through food, but it also makes small amounts from the amino acid tryptophan, which can be found in protein sources like turkey and other animal foods.
• Function:
  • Niacin works in the body as a coenzyme, with enzymes dependent on it for various reactions.
  • Niacin helps to convert nutrients into energy, create cholesterol and fats, create and repair DNA, and exert antioxidant effects.
• Food Sources: A niacin deficiency is rare because it is found in many foods, both from animals and plants.
  • Red meat: beef, beef liver, pork
  • Poultry
  • Fish
  • Brown rice
  • Fortified cereals and breads
  • Nuts, seeds
  • Legumes
  • Bananas
• Deficiency:
• A severe niacin deficiency leads to pellagra, a condition that causes a dark, sometimes scaly rash to develop on skin areas exposed to sunlight; bright redness of the tongue; and constipation/diarrhea.
• Other signs of severe niacin deficiency include:
  • Depression
  • Headache
  • Fatigue
  • Memory loss
  • Hallucinations

What is NAD(P)HX dehydratase (NAXD)?

• It is an essential cellular enzyme that helps repair damaged forms of key metabolic molecules, ensuring normal energy production and cell survival.
• NAXD deficiency is a rare neurometabolic disease with infantile onset marked by repeated episodes of developmental regression and progressive neurodegeneration, often triggered by febrile illnesses.
• Clinical features include lethargy, hypotonia, irritability, gait ataxia, loss of speech, movement disorders, seizures, ophthalmoplegia, and hearing loss.

About Impatiens nagorum:

• It is a new species of flowering plant.
• It was discovered in Fakim Wildlife Sanctuary in Nagaland.
• The species name “nagorum” honours the Naga tribes of Nagaland.
• Impatiens — commonly known as balsams or “touch-me-nots” — are flowering plants famous for their brightly coloured blooms and seed pods that burst open when touched.
• The Eastern Himalayas and Northeast India are among the world’s richest regions for this group of plants.
• Found in moist temperate broadleaf forests, the newly described species is currently known only from its type locality.
• The plant bears distinctive purple flowers.
• It differs from closely related species in having serrated leaves, slightly hairy lateral sepals, and a deeper lower sepal that gradually tapers into a hooked spur.

About National Science Day 2026:

• It is celebrated every year on February 28 to mark the contributions of scientists towards the development of the country.
• It commemorates the discovery of the Raman Effect by the Indian physicist, Dr. Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, on the same day in the year 1928.
  • For this discovery, he was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
• In 1986, the Government of India declared 28 February as National Science Day.
• The first National Science Day was celebrated in 1987, and since then, it is observed every year with a special theme.
• National Science Day 2026 Theme: "Women in Science: Catalysing Viksit Bharat".
• On this day, schools, colleges, coaching institutes, and research organisations across the country will come together to honour scientists, inspire students, and promote a scientific way of thinking.

What is the Raman Effect?

• It is the change in the wavelength of light that occurs when a light beam is deflected by molecules.
• When a beam of light traverses a dust-free, transparent sample of a chemical compound, a small fraction of the light emerges in directions other than that of the incident (incoming) beam.
• Most of this scattered light is of unchanged wavelength.
• A small part, however, has wavelengths different from that of the incident light; its presence is a result of the Raman effect.
• The effect demonstrated that light can be scattered, carrying valuable information about molecular vibrations.
• The phenomenon is named for Indian physicist Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who first published observations of the effect in 1928.
• Ever since the discovery, this discovery has become an important tool in medicine, chemistry, physics, and material composition and properties.