Author: Dr NP Shukla

India’s aspiration of becoming a five‑trillion‑dollar economy and a global manufacturing hub is insepa­rable from its energy transition and min­eral security. Clean energy, digital infra­structure and advanced manufacturing all rest on a quiet but decisive founda­tion: a reliable supply of critical miner­als. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements and allied materials now play for green technologies the role that coal and oil played for the fossil‑fuel era. At the same time, rapid advances in automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) are transforming how these minerals are discovered, extracted and processed. For India, the convergence of…