New Delhi [India], October 29 : Ajai Chowdhry, Co-Founder of HCL and Chairman of the National Quantum Mission, has warned that 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.
Speaking to ANI, Chowdhry highlighted how China has systematically gained control over critical minerals over the past decade and a half.
"Rare earths are absolutely essential for many, many products. EVs, for example, and batteries, all these products use rare earth. 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.
He pointed out that recent Chinese export restrictions on rare earths have already triggered strong reactions from the United States.
"Now, because they decided to propose serious exports of rare earth, America has put in a 100% extra duty. Now, what should we do?" he said.
Chowdhry acknowledged the environmental and operational challenges of rare earth mining, which he described as "a very dirty job."
"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.
Ajai Chowdhary proposed an immediate solution to India's rare-earth dependency by extracting critical minerals from the country's growing e-waste, claiming that 30-40 per cent of domestic demand could be met through this "non-mined" route, rather than waiting five to seven years for new mining projects.
Chowdhary further said that the Centre and NITI Aayog have already prepared a comprehensive rare-earth plan, but the faster alternative lies in 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.
He added, "I've given a paper, working together with a person who's actually researched it. And I've given that paper to NITI Aayog and said... Non-mined rare earth... There are tons and tons of it available. If we just pick up e-waste. So we should use that right away, rather than wait for our mines to come up," Chowdhary stated.
While acknowledging the limitation, he maintained that the approach could significantly bridge the gap.
"I can't say it's going to replace everything but... let us say 30% or 40% of our requirement can be met just from e-waste," he said.
Shifting to the broader geopolitical context, Chowdhary warned that critical technologies are increasingly being used as leverage in global trade.
"It's the weaponisation of anything that you can think of. Software, hardware, rare earths, you know, EVs, batteries, all of these are being weaponised now. So as we conclude, I just want to speak to you about nurturing talent," he remarked.
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