Thus the Indian government is reportedly moving to fast track deals to secure future supplies for its ever-growing industrial base. According to a report in today's Hindustan Times The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has decided that the country's state-owned corporations need to be supported in aggressively pursuing the acquisition of strategic mineral resources through a dedicated fund - and it has set a 30-day deadline for such plans to be in place. According to Hindustan Times, an unnamed senior government official told it "The PMO has asked the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission to work out the size and structure of the dedicated fund in 30 days."

One of the key elements in the proposal too, is that the country's normally slow procedures will be circumvented by setting up the centralised body with rapid strategic and decision making powers.

The Indian government seems to be taking China's CIC as its model and is very conscious the Chinese fund is using a significant part of its US$200 billion of government money to acquire stakes in natural resources overseas. Oil and gas has been the prime target, but metals and minerals, have also figured high on the list among other strategic investments. Whether it will follow CIC's example in investing also in U.S. property and stocks including in the SPDR Gold Trust gold ETF is uncertain, although gold might be of interest given the country's populace's propensity to own the yellow metal. Certainly India has already followed China's lead in this respect with even the state-run Post Office and state-owned banks selling gold bars and coins to the people.

The significance of the Indian move should not be underestimated. Indian growth is currently matching that of China and with the two Asian potential megapowers with enormous populations taking ever increasing volumes of raw materials from the global supply, the pressure on resources can only increase dramatically.

According to the report, India is also beginning to try and use diplomatic pressures to help secure supplies with the External Affairs Ministry tasked with a strategy to help acquire them, particularly in Africa which is seen as key area of potential supply with resources frequently directly controlled by government.

Eoin Treacy's view India has similar long-term growth ambitions to China. However, while China has aggressively opened up to foreign direct investment, spent trillions on infrastructure projects and used diplomacy and its cheque book to secure access to key resources, India has been a laggard. If India is to follow China in raising hundreds of millions of additional people out of poverty and into the middle classes, it will have to get serious about securing access to the resources needed to fuel such development. It now appears to be taking a more proactive approach to this key strategic goal in its development.

China and India have the largest urban populations in the world. Ranked by the percentage of the people living in urban areas they slip to 128th (43%) and 161st (29%) respectively. It might be argued that China is more urbanised that these figures suggest because of the large floating migrant population, but this does not negate the fact that India remains considerably less urbanised.

If we look at the development of just about every country from an agriculture dependent to industrial dominated economy, the percentage of people living in cities and other urban areas has increased considerably. There is little doubt that if India continues to progress as it has in the last two decades, the urban population will rise. The government now appears to be planning for this eventuality but will need to follow through by actually building the infrastructure needed to provide housing, employment, heat, light, food and sanitation for these people.

If India succeeds in cutting through the bureaucracy and vested interests that act as a drag on development, the country's per capita consumption of commodities could increase by multiples over the coming decades.