How India's manufacturing future rides on ceramics

In a modest industrial park on the outskirts of Tamil Nadu’s Hosur, engineers crowd around a furnace glowing orange. Inside, at nearly 1,600 degrees Celsius, a small white pellet is taking shape—a heat-resistant component that could one day sit inside an electric vehicle motor or a missile nozzle.

“It’s just ceramic,” one of them says, smiling wearily after a long shift. Yet, behind that simple statement lies India’s larger struggle to build materials that will power its industrial future.

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That struggle is now central to India’s economic agenda. The government is finalising a National Mission for Manufacturing designed to push the country into the next phase of industrial growth with a special emphasis on cleantech manufacturing. From semiconductors and solar wafers to batteries, green hydrogen systems and advanced materials, the aim is to make India not just an assembly hub but a source of critical technologies. But as a new policy brief by the New Delhi-based Centre for WTO Studies (CWS) reminds us, the foundations of such a transformation depend on mastering the smallest, often invisible, inputs.

The brief, ‘Critical Materials for Critical Industries: India’s Advanced Ceramics Opportunity’, co-authored by Dr Qayoom Khachoo, Dr Kashika Arora and CWS head Dr Pritam Banerjee, examines one of those overlooked pillars: advanced ceramics.