NITI Aayog and TEXMiN sign research statement as India builds a $40 billion minerals stack

The tie-up puts a national policy body and a research park behind India's critical minerals push. It leaves the hard part open. Companies and foreign partners still cannot tell which technologies will get priority.

A statement of intent, not a funding deal

NITI Aayog Member Gobardhan Das signed the document during a visit to IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. There he inaugurated the National Symposium on Critical Minerals and Rare Earths (CMRE 2026) on 31 October.

It lists four areas of work: collaborative research and technology development; technical and strategic studies; policy and institutional support; and capacity building and knowledge exchange. Both organisations frame the agreement around the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) and the Aatmanirbhar Bharat and Viksit Bharat 2047 goals. TEXMiN is the Technology Translation Research Park at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. It runs under the Department of Science and Technology, PSU Watch reported. The statement attaches no money, headcount or timetable.

The $40 billion policy stack

India's emerging industrial policy for critical minerals value chains entails more than a dozen regulatory, financial and trade instruments. They are worth nearly $40 billion, according to a Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy commentary.

The build-up has been sequential. In 2023 the Ministry of Mines identified 30 minerals as critical to the Indian economy on economic importance and supply risk. The 2024 Union Budget proposed a Critical Minerals Mission. The National Critical Mineral Mission followed in January 2025. Three features distinguish the strategy, the commentary argues. Support runs across multiple stages of the value chain, not mining alone. Manufacturing incentives and consumer subsidies stimulate domestic demand. India pursues supplies abroad because it stays heavily import dependent.

From mine-centric to full value chain

Das used the symposium to argue against a mine-centric approach.

He called for an integrated value chain: exploration and identification, extraction and processing, refining and material development, advanced materials, and recycling and recovery from secondary resources. He also pointed to coal fly ash, red mud, mine tailings and electronic waste as secondary sources. He stressed translating research outcomes into commercially viable technologies.

The China benchmark

The benchmark is China. CEPA puts its share of rare earth mining at approximately 60%. Processing and separation sit at 90%. Permanent magnet manufacturing sits at 94%.

The concentration runs past rare earths. China controls about 94% of battery-grade graphite processing and roughly three-quarters of cobalt refining. Beijing has already shown how that position can be used. It imposed export controls on several rare earth metals and heavy rare earth elements. This forced some automakers to cut production or halt lines. It then widened the restrictions to Chinese technology, graphite anode material and battery cathode inputs. At their October 2025 Busan meeting, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to suspend some curbs until November 2026. That suspension was later extended to January 2027. The International Energy Agency has said the restrictions, if fully enforced, could put at risk $6.5 trillion in annual downstream output.

That is the gap India's policy stack is meant to narrow.

Trade policy and India's third-way pitch

Washington is building its own architecture. The United States has advanced bilateral and regional critical minerals frameworks with Australia, the EU, India, Japan, Mexico and other trading partners, according to an Ernst & Young analysis.

A Federal Register notice filed by the USTR in February 2026 may prove the inflection point, the analysis says. The notice explicitly considers coordinated approaches, not tariffs alone. The Columbia commentary argues India could position itself as a third way in the global critical minerals ecosystem. That would be distinct from China's state-capital-intensive model and from Western security-led strategies. On that reading, India would act as an industrial bridge. It would support value addition in developing economies while helping advanced economies diversify supply. Success depends on coordination with mineral-rich developing economies that want their own processing capacity. It also depends on advanced economies chasing mineral security and manufacturing goals.

What to watch

The NCMM's stated objective is a globally competitive and resilient critical mineral ecosystem.

The policy mixes domestic processing support with efforts to secure mineral supplies abroad. The new statement adds a research and capacity-building layer. Until projects and funding appear, the test for miners, battery makers and foreign partners is whether Indian processing capacity grows faster than the import bill. India's 30-mineral critical list gives the government a place to start counting.

The mission's first funding decisions will be the next signal to watch.