Highlights

• India currently depends on China for over 90% of its rare earth magnets, despite owning the world's fifth-largest rare earth reserves.
• A comprehensive five-pillar plan proposes government-backed strategies to develop domestic rare earth magnet production capabilities.
• Significant challenges remain, including lack of commercial-scale separation facilities and substantial investment requirements to achieve self-sufficiency.

India is dreaming big—magnet big. The Mint/ANI report lays it out plainly: more than 90% of the rare earth magnets that drive India’s EVs, wind turbines, and defense tech come from one place—China, the same country that commands roughly 92% of the world’s magnet-making muscle. The fact that India owns the planet’s fifth-largest rare earth reserves only sharpens the paradox. Resource-rich, yet capacity-poor.

Enter the five-pillar plan from Primus Partners: lock in demand with government-backed offtakes, build pilot clusters in mineral-rich states, create a national innovation hub, coordinate ministries, and push recycling to fill the gap. On paper, it’s a sturdy scaffolding—mirroring the industrial policy playbooks of nations that actually broke free from foreign chokeholds.

But here’s where the steel of the plan meets the rust of reality. India doesn’t yet have a single commercial-scale facility to separate neodymium, praseodymium, or the heavy rare earths that make magnets truly powerful. Building one isn’t a matter of months—it’s a matter of years. The budgeted ₹1,345 crore incentive for magnets may be a welcome seed, but it’s a fraction of the billions private capital will demand before committing. And while the report talks about recycling supplying 40 kt globally by 2030, India’s current recycling base is closer to a rounding error.

The tone of the piece hums with inevitability, as if reserves plus ambition equal destiny. But the obstacles are political as well as technical: aligning state and federal interests, accelerating clearances, securing technology transfer, and competing head-on with Australia, the U.S., and Japan for expertise and offtake deals. China took decades to build its grip; India’s wager is that urgency and coordination can collapse that timeline. That’s a high-stakes bet.

For now, the markers that matter are still ahead: integrated separation-to-magnet pilots breaking ground, joint ventures with seasoned magnet makers inked, and measurable domestic output feeding India’s EV and defense lines within a tight three-to-five-year window.

Until those things happen, this five-pillar plan remains more blueprint than building. The ambition is real; the execution will decide whether it’s a magnet for investment—or just another policy paper gathering dust.

Citation: “Five-pillar plan to make India self-reliant in rare earth magnet production: Report.” Mint/ANI (opens in a new tab), 13 Aug. 2025.

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