14 years ago there were just 18 index based products in India. Today there are over 200. In the past year and a half the total corpus in index funds has doubled from 3 trillion rupees to 6.25 trillion rupees. That means these indices wield a lot of power as well. You can't do much about it unless you ban index funds or break up the concentration of power among a few select index makers. But that's not really a plausible solution so the only way out is to regulate them.
In today’s episode for 9th January 2023, we explain why SEBI, India’s capital markets regulator, wants to have more oversight over stock market indices.