India’s NITI Aayog calls for streamlining licensing and registration rules across professions to boost mobility, reduce costs, and sustain quality in a rapidly growing services economy, with healthcare as a key focus.
NITI Aayog is urging India to overhaul the rules governing professional services, including medicine, law, engineering, nursing and accountancy, in a bid to reduce barriers to practice and make it easier for qualified people to move across states and markets. The policy think tank says the current system, with separate licensing and registration requirements across professions and jurisdictions, is too fragmented for a services economy that is trying to expand more quickly. According to The Indian Practitioner and The Indian Express, the push is part of a wider effort to make professional regulation more consistent while preserving standards.
The proposal comes as the Services and Economic Intelligence Unit at NITI Aayog continues work on a broader strategy for services-sector growth, including value addition, employment, exports, productivity and foreign direct investment. That unit says it is designed to provide macroeconomic monitoring and policy support for India’s long-term growth agenda. The health and family welfare division, meanwhile, is tasked with policy inputs that align with the National Health Policy 2017 and with strengthening access and outcomes in the health sector.
Healthcare has emerged as one of the clearest test cases for the reform push. In July 2025, industry body Nathealth met NITI Aayog to press for changes in hospital, diagnostics and medical device regulation, telling Business Standard that the sector is overseen by multiple ministries and several tiers of government. Nathealth backed a digital single-window system for compliance, arguing that a more streamlined framework would cut duplication and reduce operational delays.
NITI Aayog has also previously backed measures to address shortages of qualified medical staff, including a scheme that links district hospitals with medical colleges through public-private partnership arrangements. The broader message from the think tank is that simplification should not come at the expense of safety or quality. Instead, officials and industry groups appear to be converging on a model that would ease mobility, reduce compliance costs and still maintain professional standards in sectors that are central to India’s growth plans.
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