How can India meet its rare earth demand amid China's dominance? HCL co-founder suggests innovative solution

China's dominance over rare earth elements poses a serious strategic risk to global manufacturing, including India's ambitions in electric vehicles (EVs) and advanced technologies, said Ajai Chowdhry, HCL co-founder and the chairman of the National Quantum Mission.

He warned that China has gained control over critical rare earth minerals, whichare of strategic importance. He said that these materials under China's control are critical for the production of several products, including EVs and their batteries. He said China bought mines over the past 15 years, and it can weaponise its control over rare earth materials.

"What China did in the last 10 or 15 years: they started sourcing from all over the world and bought over the mines. So today, 90% of the world's rare earths are controlled by them, and they can be weaponised. So if they don't supply rare earth, a lot of our products cannot be developed, whether they're in India and America, or Europe," Chowdhry said.

‘Rare earth mining very dirty job’

He said mining for rare earth is a "very dirty job" that creates health issues.

“Rare earth mining is a very dirty job. It creates a lot of... a lot of stuff that is not good for health. So mining is a very tough job. So that's part one of that. But of course, in China, it doesn't matter. Nobody gets to know. In any case, they can manage that. We can't. The second thing is that we have never thought about it earlier as a country. So we are pretty late in this,” he added.

What should India do?

He said India must extractcritical minerals from the country's growing e-waste. He said30-40 per cent of domestic demand could be met through this "non-mined" route. He said that the government has prepared acomprehensive rare-earth plan for recycling electronic scrap.

"Now, a rare earth plan has been put together by the government. NITI Aayog has worked on it. All that is going on. But it will take us five to seven years to get there. But there's a faster way…the faster way is that a lot of that e-waste we were talking about earlier contains rare earths. So what we should do is take all that rare e-waste and convert it into the rare earth materials we need. Tons and tons of that can be created," he said.