Quality Real Estate: A Case For Foreign Architects in India

​If you are living in Delhi or just visiting India's capital city, you will not stop wondering that Lutyens' Delhi is an exceptional achievement. British historian and writer William Darlymple once said that architect Edwin Lutyens does not have many followers in India. His legacy does not live on in modern India. But, it is difficult to imagine Delhi without these impressive set of buildings.

According to The Architects Act, 1972, for a foreign architect to work in modern India, he needs the permission of the Central Government. While many developers advertise that their residential projects in India are designed by foreign architects, Indian architects put their signs on those designs. Many developers defend themselves saying that there are no legal restrictions on hiring foreign consultants. Though many analysts blame the developers for misleading home buyers, such regulations waste precious talent and resources as they do not allow access to a global labor pool.

To understand what this means, imagine Bangalore without the large pool of software engineers and employers who migrated from other parts of India. Engineers would not have been able to switch jobs easily, to acquire skills and earn higher salaries. When start-ups fail, young entrepreneurs would not have had such a large safety net. Venture capitalists would not have flourished in Bangalore. Bangalore as we know it would not even exist.

The effects of the absence of an unrestricted global labor pool are even worse. But, we do not see it because there was never an unrestricted global labor pool. For instance, in a globalized economy, the salaries of engineers in Bangalore would have risen to global levels. The Indian IT industry employs over three million professionals while the construction industry employs at least ten times this figure. Now, consider how important it is to have a global labor pool in real estate in India. The construction industry is India's second largest employer after agriculture.

Lutyens' Delhi has some of the most valuable land in India. Though home prices in central Delhi are higher than those in expensive parts of London or New York, many argue against allowing high-rise constructions in Lutyens' Delhi because this would destroy its heritage value. But, high-rise constructions would have created more space in parts of Delhi where it is most needed. If foreign architects are allowed to easily collaborate with Indian developers, they would have given us many more such sublime expressions of man's genius.