India, Critical Mineral Strategy: Auctions, Reforms and the Quest to gain Resource Sovereignty.

The rapidly increasing trend of India towards securing the critically important mineral resources is a turning point in the economic and strategic thinking of this country. The government has indicated its long-term investment in enhancing domestic resource capacity as successful bidding of 46 mineral blocks and the initiation of a seventh tranche with 19 more blocks. It is not an administrative move only; it indicates a greater understanding that access to vital minerals will determine the course of industrial development, energy transition, and national security in the next many years.

Greenland, Thule and the Logic of Power: When Strategy Overrides Sovereignty

On January 21, 1968, a United States Air Force B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear weapons crashed onto the frozen ice near Thule Air Base in Greenland. Officially, it was an accident—one of the many hazards of Cold War nuclear brinkmanship. In reality, the episode revealed a deeper and more troubling pattern: the subordination of sovereignty, transparency and Indigenous rights to strategic imperatives. More than half a century later, as Donald Trump speaks openly about acquiring Greenland, the Thule crash appears less an anomaly and more an early chapter in a continuing story of geopolitical entitlement.

Ease of Doing Business and India’s Clean Energy Manufacturing Moment

India’s addition of over 45 GW of clean energy capacity in 2025 marks a decisive shift in its energy transition. Renewable power is no longer a marginal supplement but a core pillar of the electricity system, increasingly expected to deliver round-the-clock, dispatchable energy. As India moves from intermittent renewables to firm clean power, a larger strategic opportunity opens up: becoming a global manufacturing hub for clean energy technologies. Whether this opportunity is realised will depend less on ambitious targets and more on the depth and continuity of Ease of Doing Business (EODB) reforms.

Reform Express and the Farm Economy: The Hardest Test Yet

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s description of his government as being in “Reform Express” mode reflects a renewed policy momentum. Recent initiatives—ranging from income-tax rationalisation and GST reforms to labour law changes, employment scheme adjustments and new trade agreements—signal an attempt to push growth-enhancing reforms at speed. Encouraging macroeconomic indicators reinforce this narrative: GDP growth is estimated at 7.4% in 2025–26, while consumer inflation fell sharply to 1.3% in December 2025.

Yet, sustaining this momentum into FY27 will depend less on headline reforms and more on tackling India’s most politically sensitive structural bottleneck—agriculture and food policy. Without reforming the incentive structure in agriculture, India risks high aggregate growth coexisting with rural distress.

Child Trafficking, Article 21 and the Search for Real Justice

Child trafficking remains one of the gravest contradictions to India’s constitutional promise of dignity, equality and protection for every child. Despite a robust legal framework and frequent rescue operations, trafficking networks continue to thrive, shielded by weak investigations and low conviction rates. In this context, the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in K. P. Kiran Kumar vs State marks an important constitutional moment. By holding that child trafficking amounts to a gross violation of the right to life under Article 21, the Court has reframed the issue—not merely as a criminal offence, but as a direct assault on fundamental rights.