Global and Indian interest on the role of hi-tech materials for crafting strategies that furthers a country’s development and geopolitical interests has been on the increase lately. This renewed interest has come about from the various actions taken by China to establish a dominant position in the global Rare Earths (RE) industry and to leverage this position to further its global interests.
India has a fairly strong resource base in Rare Earths and with further exploration these can increase. It has also been engaged in mining and RE extraction activities for more than three decades. This makes it possible for India to become a fairly important player in the global RE industry.
In this connection a National Conference on Rare Earths Processing and Utilization- 2014 was held on May 2- 3, 2014 at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai. This was organized jointly by the Indian Institute of Metals, Mumbai Chapter, Rare Earth Association of India (REAI), and the Materials Research Society of India (MRSI), Mumbai Chapter.
In this brief we, the authors have examined the Abstracts of the conference proceedings and the papers presented at the conference to make a critical appraisal of the R&D conducted within India on RE and the relevance of this R&D for India’s development.