Professionals not ready for trade

The good news now is that something is being done to regulate not just structural engineers but all engineers across the board. What the mass killings in the Gujarat earthquake failed to do is now being brought about by the fast approaching GATS deadline of January 2005. None of our engineers can undertake foreign assignments after that deadline unless their profession is legally regulated in India and they are formally registered as engineers with a statutory body. The bad news, however, is that the regulation has been introduced not through a legislation but a public notice issued last Sunday by the All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE) announcing that all engineers will hereafter have to be registered with it.

Although, the AICTE is a statutory body, for some reason it was created only to regulate the education and not the profession of engineering. If post-WTO, the Government wants to extend the AICTE’s jurisdiction to the profession as well, the only legally sustainable way is to make the necessary amendments to the law. But because of the lack of public awareness, or for fear of triggering off a needless political controversy, the Government chose to avoid Parliament and instead allowed the AICTE to expand its powers through a residuary clause in the existing law. This is a highly unsatisfactory arrangement because the AICTE will, without any statutory backing, not only issue licences to engineers but also prescribe what it called ‘etiquettes and code of ethics.’ As a corollary, the AICTE has assumed the power to take disciplinary action against engineers found to have violated its etiquettes or code. The AICTE will have no leg to stand on if an aggrieved engineer legally challenges its power to suspend or cancel his licence on the basic question of jurisdiction.

Whatever the shortcomings of the bid to regulate the profession of engineering, it compares favourably with the inaction vis-a-vis the legal profession. Here the problems are entirely different. Unlike the AICTE, the Bar Council has from its inception been statutorily empowered to register lawyers as well as to enforce discipline. So, there is no impediment for Indian lawyers to practise their profession outside the country when GATS comes into force in less than two years. Yet, the Government could make no headway because of the indifference, or rather hostility, displayed by the Bar Council to any discussion on the subject. Impervious to the WTO-inspired changes sweeping across the world, the Bar Council has stuck to its age-old position of being ‘‘totally opposed to the entry of foreign lawyers in India.’’ Though the WTO issues are essentially legal, it is ironical that the Bar Council has shown absolutely no comprehension of them. Take the last communication the Law Ministry sent to the Bar Council in this regard in October 2002. The Ministry’s communication ran into 20 pages as it requested the Bar Council to give its opinion on what should India’s stand be in the WTO negotiations on trade in legal services. It also annexed the specific requests India received from its trading partners, including the US, EC, Australia, Brazil, China and Singapore. But all this was lost on the Bar Council as it responded with a trite four-sentence letter saying it ‘‘sticks to its considered decision’’ of not allowing foreign lawyers in India. Conversely, the Bar Council has for a long time denied Indian lawyers the opportunity of undertaking foreign assignments, whether within the country or abroad.