I am not suggesting Indian architects are inadequate. The profession has produced extraordinary work – from Charles Correa's quiet humanism to Balkrishna Doshi's Nobel-recognised genius. However, the regulatory barriers meant to protect the profession are holding it back. It is time for an honest conversation about this.The Architects Act of 1972 established the Council of Architecture (COA) as the statutory body regulating architecture practice in India. Its founding logic was sound: to ensure those calling themselves architects meet a minimum standard of competence and to protect the public interest. Fifty-plus years on, however, the Act and the COA's posture have calcified into something closer to a trade barrier than a quality standard. The registration requirement, restrictions on foreign architects practising without local licensure, and the general suspicion toward international participation have all been defended as protecting Indian architects. That argument deserves scrutiny.The case against protectionismThe concern driving architectural protectionism is not irrational. It goes like this: if India opens its doors to foreign architects with deeper pockets, global branding and access to sophisticated technology, they will push out Indian practices, especially mid-sized ones. Indian architects will be reduced to draftsmen and site supervisors in their own country. It is a legitimate fear; one I have heard in several architectural fraternity meetings.But the premise is outdated. Walk into any major real-estate developer's office in Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru, and you will find that high-profile international projects – the mixed-use towers, corporate campuses, luxury hospitality projects – are already done by foreign firms. This is not done openly or transparently but through complicated workarounds: the foreign firm is listed as ‘design consultant’ (not ‘Architect’ – a title protected by the Architects Act), the local architect of record provides the stamp, and everyone quietly pretends the arrangement is something else. The wall has not kept foreign architects out. It has made the process opaque, legally murky and, arguably, prevented genuine, structured collaboration that would benefit Indian professionals.If the goal of protection was to keep Indian architects relevant and well-compensated on large projects, it has failed. The architect of record in these shadow arrangements is often a liability-bearing formality rather than a creative partner. Protectionism has produced the very outcome it was designed to prevent. Foreign architectural firms descend on India with their own teams, design everything in their home offices, and leave without a trace of local involvement. In practice, this is rarely true – certainly not on large or complex projects. Most international firms working in India already engage Indian associates, local structural and MEP consultants and architects of record who carry statutory responsibility. The COA has, at various points, acknowledged and even encouraged such partnerships as the operative model.The issue is that this model functions informally rather than institutionally. No formal framework defines roles or ensures credit for the Indian partner. The foreign firm controls the design narrative; the Indian firm manages bureaucracy. This hierarchy results from a regulatory vacuum that forces underhanded collusion instead of structured collaboration.Research on Indo-foreign project collaborations shows outcomes vary sharply based on the partnership. Where genuine design collaboration occurred – Indian architects contributing site knowledge, climatic understanding and material expertise alongside the foreign firm's technical skills and global perspective – the buildings were higher quality: more contextually sensitive, efficiently executed and responsive to local conditions. By contrast, projects hiring international names purely for brand cachet with little real design integration often produced inefficient, contextually inappropriate buildings. The difference was not nationality but the quality of collaboration.The global standard already existsIndia does not need to invent a new model. The International Union of Architects (UIA), to which India is a signatory, has long recommended that architects practising outside their country collaborate with a local architect to ensure understanding of legal, environmental, social and cultural factors. This is not a radical idea but global professional common sense.Look at how it works elsewhere. American firms designing large projects in China routinely partner with local design institutes (LDIs), not just for regulatory compliance but for genuine knowledge exchange. The local firm navigates construction documentation standards, supply chains and code interpretations that the foreign team cannot manage remotely. In the UAE, where architectural practice is perhaps the most internationalised in the world, foreign firms operate through formal joint ventures with locally licensed entities. Rather than eliminating local talent, this has created some of the most technically sophisticated local practices in the developing world.India's architectural firms can compete in this environment. Several Indian practices have already shown this: they work as genuine design partners with international firms. They hold their own creatively and grow from the experience with expanded technical capacity and a richer professional network. The question is: Why are we not making this the norm rather than the exception?What needs to changeThe solution is not to open the floodgates and abolish the registration requirement for foreign architects. Regulatory oversight of competence is important and necessary. The solution is to build a structured, transparent collaboration framework that replaces the current informal system with one that benefits Indian architects and clients.There are three concrete strategies for a smarter framework. First, the COA should establish a formal category of ‘Registered Foreign Collaborating Architect’. This status will allow international firms to practise in India on specific projects, subject to a mandatory joint venture with a COA-registered Indian architect. The Indian partner must be a genuine creative collaborator, not a name-lending service. The framework must define minimum involvement thresholds and protect attribution rights.Second, professional institutes like the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) should develop a standard collaboration agreement that protects both parties, defines design credits, allocates responsibilities and ensures fair fee-sharing. The absence of such a document is one reason Indian architects in these arrangements are routinely undervalued.Last, the COA's continuing professional development framework should actively promote knowledge exchange and technology transfer programmes between Indian and international practices. The learning from genuine collaboration should be formalised and encouraged.None of this requires dismantling the Architects Act. It requires updating or supplementing it with subsidiary rules that reflect how architectural practice works in a globalised economy.The larger argumentHere is what the protectionist position gets wrong. It treats architectural practice as a zero-sum game: every project won by a foreign firm is a project lost by an Indian one. But that is not how knowledge industries work. The entry of sophisticated international practice tends to raise the standards and ambitions of the entire local industry. This is possible only if local professionals are partners rather than subordinates. Singapore's architectural scene is richer, not poorer, for being shaped by international engagement and strong local voices. So is Tokyo's, and Dubai's. Closer to home, master architects like Le Corbusier and Louis I Kahn in India inspired a generation of Indian architects and produced some of our own masters and geniuses.India's cities are growing at a pace that demands better buildings, urban design and professional infrastructure than we currently have. The answer is not parochialism. A well-regulated policy structure brings international expertise to projects where it adds value, while ensuring Indian architects are at the centre of the conversation, not its margins. A confident profession engages with the world on its own terms. We have spent 50 years building a wall around the profession. Perhaps it is time to build a door instead.About the author: Samir Fayaz Shaikh is a Mumbai-based architect and urban designer. He is the Founding Principal of AR&UD Studio and the HOD of Urban Design at VES College of Architecture, Mumbai. He has 25 years of international experience on large-scale projects.