NITI Aayog proposes comprehensive reforms to streamline licensing, recognition, and mobility across professions, aiming to enhance India’s role in global trade and improve job quality amid rising demand for specialised skills.
NITI Aayog has proposed a wide-ranging overhaul of India’s rules for professional services, arguing that easier licensing, better recognition of qualifications and smoother movement across state and national borders could help the country expand its role in global trade in services. The policy think tank’s report covers law, accountancy, architecture, engineering, healthcare and allied healthcare, and places the reforms in the context of a services economy that accounted for 55% of India’s GDP in 2023-24.
According to the report, India was the world’s seventh-largest exporter of services in 2024-25, with a 4.3% share of global services exports. Professional and management consulting services alone made up nearly a fifth of the country’s services exports, underlining the commercial importance of rules that govern who can practise, where they can work and how quickly they can qualify.
The report says regulation remains uneven across professions. Medicine, law, accountancy and audit have more established statutory systems, while engineering, landscape architecture and urban planning are described as comparatively fragmented. NITI Aayog said barriers include qualification rules, licensing restrictions, nationality and residency requirements, foreign credential recognition and limits on the legal structures through which professionals may operate.
Healthcare is one area where the think tank wants sharper national rules. It highlighted the absence of a country-wide system for transferring licences between states and called for portability, clearer regulation and faster implementation of the National Exit Test, or NExT. It also urged full rollout of the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Act to strengthen oversight of allied health workers.
In engineering, the report pointed to the lack of a comprehensive statutory framework for professional practice, especially in construction and infrastructure. It recommended a central system setting out professional roles and areas of practice to improve consistency and accountability. For law, accountancy and architecture, the proposals include broader recognition of foreign qualifications, updated business structures, revised rules for overseas professionals and, in some cases, a review of advertising rules.
NITI Aayog also tied the reforms to wider changes in the labour market, saying artificial intelligence and automation are increasing demand for specialised skills in design, research and development, technology operations and consulting. The think tank said better regulation, combined with continuous professional development and stronger skills training, could lift productivity and support higher-quality jobs, entrepreneurship and innovation.
The recommendations are not binding and would need government approval as well as action from the relevant professional regulators. Still, they fit a broader reform push from NITI Aayog, which has also outlined separate plans to make overseas job placement more structured through state-run recruitment agencies, language training and digital job-matching systems.
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