Circular Economy (CE) frameworks augmented multi-dimensional research, including definitions, principles, indicators, history, limitations, enablers, and allied issues. Rethinking the designing strategies requires the exploration of CE associates and their functioning as companions for amplification through multiple suggestions, highlighting the interactions with the overall CE system towards sustainability. This paper focuses on how CE literature concentrates on premeditated areas and solution approaches. A lack of deterministic manifestations critically limits the interpretation and application of CE concepts. The paper contributes to the CE theoretical and practical understanding by for the first time outlining the CE associates, their connotation, progression, positioning in architecture, and their current state. These associates support individualization of a CE concept. The coherently applied methodology attempts to reduce the knowledge gap by following a systematic quantitative literature review process to screen 76 articles and 122 CE definitions, referencing one decade of literature. Application of comprehensive morphological mining facilitated the extraction of CE associates and later analysis. On application of Bibliometric Analysis, Text Analysis, Semantic Analysis, and Relation Mapping to the literature, 49 associates emerged. They were further validated by application of Content Analysis and Weighted Average Priority Ranking on extracted article content and definitions for deriving the most prominent associates. Subsequently, Association Rules Data Mining and K-Means Clustering were deployed in exploring the relations, ranking, and significance of CE associates. The findings consistently state that business actions (virtualize, exchange); sustainability pillars (society); and R strategies (refuse, refill, and repurpose) are unexplored CE associates, whereas Business, Economics, Environment, Measurement, Product, Industry, Resource, System, Waste, and Recycle are the most explored associates of the CE ecosystem.

India's ambitious clean energy transition necessitates a significant supply of critical minerals (CMs) essential for manufacturing clean energy technologies (CETs) of various renewable energy (RE) segments. To understand the supply vulnerability, it is imperative to ascertain the demand of CMs required in the CETs till 2070. To address existing knowledge and data gaps on the market entry of the emerging CETs, this study employs a systematic literature review and meta-analysis, which helped in developing a methodological framework based on technology readiness levels (TRL), end-of-life (EOL) considerations, and efficiency parameters of the CETs. By integrating input cost, market price, demand-side dynamics, and temporal supply-side adaptation, the approach provides an empirically grounded assessment of CET market capacity and diffusion pathways. This robust methodology helps in projecting the demand for 31 CMs across five RE segments - Solar PV, CSP, Wind (onshore & offshore), stationary BESS and Green Hydrogen Electrolysers - until 2070.Using Year-on-Year (YoY) capacity values for the Business-as-usual and Heroic (Net-Zero) scenarios from IESS 4.0, the study employs a technological assessment framework, mineral intensity analysis, and market share projections to estimate mineral requirements. Findings indicate that Copper, Nickel, Silicon, Graphite, Vanadium, Phosphorous, Rare-Earth Elements (REEs), and Lithium will see substantial growth in demand.The study highlights the aggressive growth of YoY as well as cumulative demand/requirement of each CM till 2070 portray the need for a comprehensive strategy, including resource efficiency, domestic mineral exploration, recycling initiatives, and international collaborations, to mitigate supply vulnerabilities and support India's sustainable energy future.

Enabling People-Centric Energy Transition through Circular Economy: Evidence from Rajhara, India. Animesh Ghosh & Vaibhav Chowdharyanimesh.ghosh@ashoka.edu.in, vaibhav.chowdhary@ashoka.edu.inIndia’s net-zero commitment for 2070 requires credible, people-centric pathways for managing coal-mine closures and the socio-ecological disruption they trigger. In India, the discontinuation of mining has left over 100,000 hectares of disturbed land awaiting closure or repurposing, with 299 abandoned/discontinued/closed mines identified by the Government creating not only significant livelihood risks for mine-dependent local economies, but also persistent environmental and ecological burdens (e.g., unsafe voids and overburden dumps, dust and habitat fragmentation, degraded soils, contaminated runoff/acid mine drainage, and residual emissions). This study presents action research from Rajhara, a discontinued coal-mining landscape in Palamu district, Jharkhand, where the Ashoka Centre for a People-Centric Energy Transition (ACPET) assessed closure-linked vulnerabilities and co-designed circular-economy “repurposing” interventions to rebuild livelihoods around agriculture, the dominant pre-mining occupation.Using an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach, the research combined household and farmer surveys with qualitative KIIs/FGDs to examine (i) a Solar Lift Irrigation (SLI) intervention (7.5 HP pump), (ii) the formation and early strengthening of a Farmer Producer Organization (FPO), and (iii) complementary diagnostics on clean-cooking practices. The analysis applies the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Adaptability) principles and the AARQA (Accessibility, Accountability, Reliability, Quality, Affordability) framework to assess transition outcomes across gender, wellbeing, and livelihood dimensions, besides income-expenditure dynamics.Findings show that productivity gains are strongly mediated by governance. Prior to SLI, irrigation was entirely rainfed, and farm incomes were low; post-intervention, early implementation evidence indicates improved water access, higher cropping aspirations, and strong perceived income potential among participating farmers. Water-quality testing suggests mine water is suitable for irrigation, strengthening environmental feasibility. However, operational sustainability is defined through proper execution of Water User Group-defined regulations, transparent cost-sharing, and reliable scheduling. The FPO baseline (approximately 750 farmers, with a majority being women and predominantly marginal/ small holdings) highlights the centrality of collective institutions for input aggregation, including seeds, fertilizer, production planning, and market linkages. Evidence on clean cooking highlights persistent affordability constraints and gendered exposure risks, reinforcing the need for integrated livelihood-energy interventions.Overall, the case demonstrates how repurposed post-mining assets, paired with fit-for-context local institutions, can function as a practical model of “people-centric transition” in coal-mine–affected regions.Keywords: just transition; coal-mine closure; circular economy; asset repurposing; solar lift irrigation; farmer producer organization; mixed methods; gender; India.

The adoption of circular economy strategies is only possible through proper education among young minds. However, to build an effective education model, it is necessary to consider knowledge gaps and current consumption patterns. The best option for daily-use products, around which the consumer-response analysis can provide useful insights. Mat is such a product used in every household in India. There are two variants of the mat, one made of natural fibre and the other of plastic, available in the market and on the e-commerce platform. In the current scenario, the digital market or e-commerce platform provides an avenue to simultaneously analyse consumer comments on both natural fibre-based and plastic products. The present study deployed a natural language processing approach to analyse consumer comments. The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based rating or sentiment analysis, informed by practice-based theory (PBT), indicates that the main barrier to the adoption of circular products is not a lack of environmental awareness, but the misalignment between perceived product attributes and usage practices. This necessitates integrating sustainability literacy with material awareness into the educational curriculum.