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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Make in India

Raring for a Rare Earths Revolution

01 Thu Sep 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

AMCR, Apple, Atomic Minerals Concession Rules, beach sand mining, cerium, China, DAE, Department of Atomic Energy, dysprosium, europium, India, LED, Make in India, Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, MMDR, monazite, neodymium, nuclear energy, rare earths, Skill Development, smartphone, Tesla, thorium

Since the birth of the nuclear age, the beach sands of peninsular India have attracted much attention. Every day, the sea washes up on the beaches of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Orissa valuable deposits of minerals that had been carried to the sea from the Ghats by natural erosion through sun, wind, and rain. Soon after independence, the new government brought the sands under national control due to their significance in nuclear technology. Some small exports were allowed but only to secure vital technology or cooperation in the nuclear arena.

In 1998, private companies were invited to enter the beach sand mining sector and six of the seven minerals – garnet, ilmenite, leucoxene, rutile, sillimanite, and zircon – were deregulated. Only monazite remained under the purview of the Department of Atomic Energy due to its uranium and thorium content. Since then, production has increased 80 percent and the export value of beach sand minerals has skyrocketed from Rs 35 crores in 1998 to Rs 4,500 crores in 2015. Yet despite having some 35 percent of the global deposits, India still lags significantly behind other global players such as Australia in production. One benchmark the industry uses is the ratio of extracted ore to proven deposits, known as the production reserve ratio – in India, that number is 0.0018 percent while Australia is substantially ahead at 0.01 percent.

The potential for capacity expansion and value addition in the six deregulated minerals notwithstanding, the miracle story lies in the seventh and as yet controlled atomic mineral, monazite. Although famous for its thorium content, monazite has actually only eight percent of the fissile element; the rest is composed of 0.3 percent uranium, 65 percent rare earth elements, and phosphates. After bastnäsite, the mainstay of Chinese rare earth mines, monazite is the richest source of rare earth elements and the rare earth ore most common in India.

The rare earth elements are 17 in number and as their collective name suggests, found only in very small quantities in the earth’s crust. These elements have magnetic, thermal, and electrical properties that find useful applications in several vital industries such as communications, electronics, transportation, energy, aerospace, and armaments. Some of the applications represent cutting edge technologies that could determine the material evolution of society. For example, more efficient LEDs that have already been designed are yet to leave research laboratories for want of europium and terbium in commercial quantities. Similarly, the non-availability of neodymium and dysprosium have delayed the replacement of gearbox-driven wind turbines by more efficient direct-drive units. The widespread embrace of these technologies would go a long way in meeting not just India’s stated climate change goals but also its infrastructural development goals through efficient lighting. Other applications find place in industries projected to grow exponentially over the next few decades. For example, smartphones have proliferated like wildfire in the last few years and demand is only expected to increase in the coming years; these ubiquitous gadgets, however, rely on neodymium, europium, and cerium for their speakers and screens.

Rare earth elements also find use in some of the technologies that can truly be said to be of the future. For example, Tesla has been experimenting with practical energy storage not only for its cars but also for renewable energy sources and electricity grids. Rare earths are key to some of the concepts and designs the company has developed. Easy access to rare earth may well entice Tesla to come and set up shop in India, bringing with it not just its technology and capital but also a demand for quality labour that dovetails well with the Make-in-India and Skill Development schemes that the Modi government has been trumpeting over the past couple of years.

Indeed, the ambitious may well look beyond the arrival of hi-tech multinationals like Apple and Tesla to Indian shores to the time when India will be able to produce its own Apples and Teslas for the global market. With the world’s attention turning to the environmental costs of 20th century growth, demand for commodities like rechargeable batteries, catalytic converters, fluid-cracking catalysts, hybrid vehicles, and stronger magnets are only expected to grow in the coming years. India can well emerge as a vital hub in the network of futuristic industries and technologies.

There is reason for optimism in the development of India’s rare earths industry: the world market is dominated by China, responsible for almost 98 percent of international exports and Beijing’s restrictive policies have raised concern in Tokyo, Washington, and the capitals of other major industrial powers. Wit everyone looking for other sources of these strategic elements, an Indian foray into the market would not just be welcomed but possibly nurtured by other industrial countries. Given the importance of the elements, India may even be able to import the latest technology for the safe and efficient extraction of rare earths to develop its own industry.

The technological manna, the economic bonanza, and the contribution to labour markets and skill development that would result from private sector participation in monazite processing is undeniable. Yet with uranium and thorium as by-products, there is, however, an unfounded fear of private players handling nuclear materials. First, private firms play an important role globally in the mining and processing of nuclear materials; corporations are even allowed to own and operate nuclear power plants and their record has so far been exemplary. Second, it would be easy for the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board to regularly audit or supervise the processing of monazite until the uranium and thorium are separated. The government can then buy the fissile material from the private sector to fuel its nuclear reactors. With plans to boost nuclear energy to 63 GW by 2030, this would offset the demand for imported uranium.

India stands on the cusp of another mini-revolution – what information technology was to the 1990s, rare earths promise to be for the 2020s. Development of this sector can drastically alter the global market as well as domestic conditions in strategic, economic, as well as social terms. As a major exporter of such an important resource, India stands to gain some political leverage – as China does today – in its dealings with other powers. All that remains is for Delhi to get over its irrational fear – protectionism? – of the private sector in handling radioactive materials.

But not so fast – the greatest obstacle to India’s development is India itself. Any potential for the processing of monazite in India appears to be a stillborn dream, for the government has recently moved to re-nationalise the rare earths industry. The historical record of the industry is pretty clear that government control over rare earths production will stifle growth, curtail exports, and effectively terminate any prospects of industrial, economic, or social development.

The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957 had categorised all beach sand minerals as atomic minerals. This made them prescribed substances under the Atomic Energy Act and off limits to the private sector. In 1998, the government invited the private sector to participate in beach sand mining in an effort to give a fillip to the industry and the industry grew over a hundred-fold in 15 years; in 2007, six of the seven beach sand minerals were removed from the list of prescribed substances in the Atomic Energy Act.

However, the Atomic Minerals Concession Rules of 2016 has moved to put all the minerals back onto the prescribed substances list, thereby effectively removing them from the private sector domain. Furthermore, the AMCR proposes to reserve all beach sand mineral deposits containing over 0.75 percent monazite for public sector companies; any already operating private mine that is found to contain above this concentration of monazite will have its lease terminated. Needless to say, these retrograde and draconian measures will severely damage the private sector role in beach sand mining.

If, on the other hand, the government were to allow the private sector to mine process not just the six non-radioactive minerals but also monazite, and implement policies that would encourage the production to reserve ratio to climb to 0.01 percent, industry estimates forecast almost a million jobs in direct and indirect employment, capital investments of over Rs 54,000 crores, and Rs 7,100 crores as revenue to the government. Against an annual global demand of 125,000 tonnes, India produced just 300 tonnes of rare earth elements between 2009 and 2014. A recent study done by the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water in conjunction with the Department of Science and Technology has also stated that the production of rare earth elements would significantly contribute to the growth of the manufacturing sector. In fact, the rationale for privatisation in 1998 as expressed in a Department of Atomic Energy report was that the growing demand for rare earths in the domestic and international market made the augmentation of rare earth extraction capability of interest to the country. “However,” the report stated, “this is highly capital intensive and it may not be possible for only the PSUs (both Central and State-owned) operating in this field to set up the new plants on their own. It is therefore necessary to allow the private sector to set up such plants within the framework of some broad guidelines.”

Yet time is running out. Given the geopolitical turmoil caused by Chinese assertion of hard power in recent years, major consumers of rare earth elements such as the United States and Japan are looking furiously for other alternatives. These could be either sources or materials. If they succeed, the demand for Indian rare earths would diminish and an economic as well as strategic windfall would have been missed.

China’s restrictive export policies and substantially higher prices for the export market than for domestic consumption work in India’s favour in that the global community would be eager to see it develop as an alternative source of rare earths to China. Presently, India represents barely two percent of international rare earths trade; there is confidence in the private sector that with appropriate policies, this could easily be raised to 25 percent in a decade. Besides employment and the development of the Indian hi-tech industry, a private-sector-led growth of the rare earths industry promises a healthier foreign exchange balance, and less reliance on imported resources.

The oft-heard argument that atomic resources are a security risk in private hands needs to be once and for all debunked: plenty of private firms are engaged world wide in nuclear activities from mining and processing to operating reactors. Furthermore, security has been a convenient blanket for the government under which to hide incompetence – one look at the defence sector or the nuclear energy industry should be enough. Finally, private companies would most likely be willing to bear the paranoia of the bureaucrats and agree to supervision of their monazite processing facilities by the Department of Atomic Energy. There is no reason to curtail private sector involvement in this lucrative field of the future.

The Modi government has been hailed for bringing in economic reforms, though admittedly in a trickle rather than a flood. Its beach sand mining policy, however, stands in stark contrast to the laurels it has won from economic commentators and harkens back to the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, big, bureaucratic, and opaque public sector units, and a socialistic frame of mind. If this government is serious about its Make-in-India programme, its Skill Development scheme, and its overall development agenda, it cannot afford to throttle an up and coming industry that will be the lifeblood of dozens of technological advancements of the coming decades.


A version of this post appeared on The News Minute on September 17, 2016.

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The Elephant and the Eagle at Sweet 16

05 Sun Jun 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia, United States

≈ Comments Off on The Elephant and the Eagle at Sweet 16

Tags

Ajmer, Allahabad, ASEAN, Association of South East Asian Nations, Australia Group, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation, BECA, China, CISMOA, Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, DTTI, European Union, free trade, India, intellectual property rights, Logistics Support Agreement, LSA, Make in India, Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR, NSG, nuclear, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV, smart cities, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, United Nations Security Council, United States, UNSC, Vishakapatnam, Wassenaar Arrangement, World Trade Organisation, WTO

It has been 16 years since George W Bush fundamentally altered the way the United States looked at India. As the old Cold War with the Soviet Union receded into memory and a new one with China appeared imminent, at least to the Bush White House, India emerged as an important potential ally in the new world order. India’s economy had recently started down the road to liberalisation too, making the South Asian country attractive to US industry as well as the government.

Despite frequent kerfuffles in the media – and there have been plenty – India-US relations have moved from strength to strength over the past 16 years. From the Strategic Quartet – high technology trade, space cooperation, nuclear energy, and missile defence – through the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership to the historic Indo-US nuclear deal and the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, Washington and Delhi appear poised on the brink of a century-defining partnership. If state visits are any indication of warmth, prime minister Narendra Modi is visiting the United States at this moment for the fourth time in just two years – something his predecessor required nine years to necessitate.

Defence ties are usually the most prominent measure of relations between nations for obvious reasons: not only do they declare how much skin each state has in the other’s security, but they are also a statement of how much states trust each other with their prized technology. No wonder, then, that India’s defence purchases from the United States have attracted so much attention. Between CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64 Apaches, C-17 Globemasters, and C-130J Super Hercules, India’s aggregate defence acquisitions from the United States has crossed $13 billion. The loss of India’s Multirole Medium Range Combat Aircraft contract disappointed Washington but under Modi’s Make in India programme, US defence firms are considering moving the production of the F-16 and F-18 to India.

The United States has moved beyond the role of being a mere supplier of weapons to India: officials have been engaged in talks that, if successful, would result in the co-production of systems. Under the DTTI, the next generation of Raven unmanned aerial vehicle will be jointly developed and produced. Other projects include intelligence gathering and reconnaissance pods for the C-130J, mobile electric hybrid power sources, helmet-mounted digital displays for aircraft and helicopter pilots, high energy lasers, and chemical and biological warfare protection gear for soldiers.

Washington has also been keen to assist India with core defence technologies such as the development of jet engines and the catapult launching system on board US aircraft carriers. India’s Kaveri programme has been a miserable failure and with Delhi’s increasing focus on maritime security, the US offer could provide a healthy boost to Indian capabilities.

India’s change of mind on what the Pentagon calls the foundational treaties – LSA, BECA, and CISMOA – has been a welcome surprise. These agreements formalise the sharing of logistical facilities and align communication protocols between the US military and their partners, greatly enhancing the range and capabilities of both forces in joint humanitarian or security missions. Although the agreements will remain unsigned during Modi’s visit this June, it is reported that they are close to conclusion.

The United States’ support for Indian admission to the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and technology export control groups such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Group gives some weight to Philip Zelikow’s statement in 2005 that the United States intends to help India become a major power.

Although both India and the United States have come a long way in defence cooperation, one cannot shake the feeling that both sides are still hedging from a complete commitment. India has lost no opportunity to stress that the signing of the foundational agreements with the United States will in no way erode its sovereignty, that it is happy to conduct numerous maritime joint exercises but will not be persuaded to conduct joint patrols, and that India sees itself as a friend and partner of the United States but not quite an ally. On the American side, senators questioned the wisdom of a bill that proposed elevating India to the status of a NATO ally in all but name given that the South Asian country did not see itself in that role. The US bill would have amended the Arms Export Control Act and made defence transfers to India quicker and smoother.

One hurdle in closer ties is Pakistan: India is displeased with the continued sale of US weapons to the Islamic republic despite ample evidence pointing to terrorist ties and an unhelpful disposition towards US goals in South and Central Asia. However, the dynamics of these ties have remained relatively unchanged since the 1950s: Pakistan provides services in the region that the United States cannot get elsewhere in return for White House forbearance on matters Islamabad sees as vital to its interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was basing privileges for US reconnaissance aircraft conducting missions over China and the Soviet Union; in the 1970s, Islamabad served as the channel to Beijing and a rapprochement with China; in the 1980s, it was the shipment of arms to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. In the 2010s, Islamabad has become the conduit to the Taliban, with whom Washington hopes to negotiate a “decent interval.” Even now, though the United States has been urging India to play a greater role in Afghanistan, Delhi has declined, choosing to involve itself more in important but not critical facets of Afghanistan’s development.

India’s reluctance to play a more significant role in its own interests may frustrate observers but this has, understandably, in large part to do with the country’s capabilities. Couched in the rhetoric of multipolarity and morality, India’s inaction misleads the casual observer. The ignored pachyderm in the room is that Delhi lacks the financial and industrial wherewithal to flex its military muscle in Central Asia or the South China Sea, and any attempt to persuade it to do so will fail. The remedy to this is economic growth, technological development, and strategic coalitions.

On the surface of it, economic relations seem to have grown substantially between India and the United States. Both countries are investing more in each other’s economies and trade between the two stands hovers around $70 billion. More and more US companies are setting up shop in India as Indian companies are expanding their business beyond the Atlantic. Washington is the lead partner for developing Allahabad, Ajmer, and Vishakapatnam as smart cities. There is still plenty of room to grow and Modi has ambitiously suggested aiming for $500 billion in trade in a few years. However, there are several issues that will plague relations. The first is subsidies: Washington recently won a case against India at the World Trade Organisation that prohibited the Indian government from giving preferential treatment to domestic solar panel manufacturers. US firms are also pushing Washington to act against subsidies the Indian Space Research Organisation gets from the government for its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle programme.

A second hurdle is intellectual property. In several sectors, India has brought its laws into alignment with US and international norms yet there remain significant differences in philosophy. Pharmaceuticals is one such field, where Indian courts have been hostile to the US practice of evergreening patents, instead seeing a social dimension to the industry. India has also had disagreements with the United States on its agricultural subsidies and food security programme.

A sector-specific yet politically potent point of friction is nuclear energy. Although the Indo-US nuclear deal was announced in 2005 and came into force in 2008, there has been little movement on that front since. India’s nuclear liability laws were found to be at odds with international norms and it was only in 2015 when US president Barack Obama visited India during the Republic Day celebrations that some headway was made in easing the logjam. The Indian side came up with a convoluted mechanism to bypass its own law without losing face and satisfied Washington but private companies are still uncomfortable with the provisions. As a result, a number of nuclear energy projects have stalled across the country; GE has flatly refused to participate in the Indian nuclear energy market as long as the present law stands and Westinghouse has delayed the submission of its project proposals. The sins committed by the BJP while in Opposition have been visited upon the BJP while in power.

A probable future cause for concern is the US creation of large trading spheres via the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. India is not party to either of these blocs and its efforts to forge free trade agreements with important partners such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proceeded at a snail’s pace. There is a danger that the implementation of the TPP and TPIP will take trade away from Indian shores to within the bloc, dampening much-needed Indian economic growth.

Many of these frictions arise from the fact that the US and Indian economies are at different points: certain Indian policies may not optimize on economic efficiency but are geared towards lifting more of its population out of poverty or establishing its own industries firmly in the international arena. Delhi and Washington have much work to do to negotiate through the clashing policies that will certainly arise in the future and early recognition and amelioration will insulate relations from harsh market realities.

After 16 years, India-US relations are on a firm footing. Much has been accomplished though a lot more remains to be done. It was feared that the warmth between the two would dissipate after the exit of Bush and the election of Obama but despite the lull due to an international economic slowdown and a paralysed UPA government, ties have started to blossom again in the past two years since Modi took office. India enjoys bipartisan support in the US and Washington a hesitant embrace in Delhi. Can relations be derailed? There will always be swings and roundabouts but it seems to have dawned on both countries that the geopolitics of this century are best navigated as friends than estranged democracies.


This post appeared on FirstPost on June 06, 2016.

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Tackling Farmer Suicides in India

23 Thu Apr 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

agriculture, energy, farmer suicide, India, Land Acquisition BIll, Make in India, reforms

Everything about the suicide of the alleged farmer from Dausa, Gajendra Singh, save the tragedy for his family, has been theatre. The very public venue, the occasion of a political rally, the politicians happily playing their populist cards, and the media focus on trivialities. The tragedy is being skillfully milked for all its political mileage without addressing the grave issue of farmer suicides in India which occur at the approximate rate of about 15,00 per annum and represent 11 per cent of the total number of suicides in the country.

Farmers are the holy cows of every country. They are the recipients of quotas, subsidies, and tax benefits not just in India but also in Europe and the United States. In fact, benefits extended to the agricultural class in the West are significantly more than in India. According to a WTO filing, India’s total farm subsidy stands at $56 billion; this caters to approximately 120 million Indians who are engaged in fulltime or part-time cultivation. In contrast, the United States pays out an average farm subsidy of approximately $20 billion to some two million farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers; the European Union pays €58 billion to its agricultural class that numbers slightly over 27 million. These numbers offer some perspective on the state of agricultural subsidies in India and where the focus of agricultural reform initiatives should lie.

Interestingly, studies into the causes of farmer suicide have not yielded any concrete results. It is usually found to be a confluence of pressures, of which indebtedness is a major but not primary factor. In a 2014 study, a prevalence of three factors accounted for almost 75 per cent of farmer suicides – land ownership of less than 10,000 m2, excessive reliance on cash crops, and a debt of Rs. 300 or more. The increasing vulnerability of this particular segment of farmers is a long story. In essence, the Green Revolution of the 1970s and early 1980s exacted a price in terms of soil salinity, fertiliser consumption, and water requirements. Farms that were not viable tried to get more bang for their buck by opting for higher yields via modified seeds and growing cash crops. These were more expensive and susceptible to the vagaries of the market; if a crop were to fail, the burden of debt on a small farm would be enormous.

Admittedly, the government has had several schemes on offer for decades to help farmers modernise their holdings. Unfortunately, the high initial investments required, in combination with negative incentives such as input subsidies (fertiliser, pesticide, water, electricity), have meant that small farms did not avail of the benefits these schemes had to offer and remained unmechanised, without micro-irrigation, and with poor crop storage facilities. Thus, small holdings remain unviable and the input subsidies politicians eagerly announce do little to change this fact. In essence, government assistance does not usually reach the neediest segment.

It is also a myth that the frequent bank loan waivers alleviates the penury of small farmers. Most farmers have hardly any collateral and fail to satisfy other conditions to qualify for bank loans. As a result, they turn to local moneylenders who charge exorbitant rates of interest. As a 2012 government report revealed, 85 per cent of farmers who held less than 0.1 hectares of land had loans pending to moneylenders, and among those owning over 10 hectares, only 21 per cent resorted to borrowing from the unorganised sector. The methods of the moneylenders in recovering their investment are legend and likely direct contributors to causes of farmer suicide.

The cumulative result of corruption, inefficiency, and lack of access to finance keeps small farmers in the high risk category wherein a medical emergency or a marriage – even the lowest of the low in India cannot abandon their extravagant marriage ceremonies – can tilt the balance from borderline sustenance into debt, poverty, and suicide.

Though the local requirements may vary from region to region, agriculture in India is desperate for a complete overhaul. This cannot be done on its own – if farmers are to be displaced from their lands so that some economy of scale can make farms viable again, there must be alternative sources of income for them. In that regard, this government’s ‘Make in India’ programme is vital. If industry and manufacturing can absorb labour, with a little regulatory help, farms can grow larger and become viable. Yet for industry to expand, it needs power and land. This is where the government’s efforts to reform land acquisition laws and improve the energy situation in the country interlock. Each sector carries part of the weight towards an eventual improvement in the lives of small farmers and of Indian agriculture. This is the set of reforms politicians and the media need to be discussing, not the parasitic politics one has become accustomed to in this country.


This post appeared in The Hindu on April 25, 2015.

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