Saturday morning, Mumbai. The Jio Convention Centre's Jasmine Hall — a venue capable of seating north of 500 souls — filled up for SEBI's 38th Foundation Day. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman graced the occasion. SEBI chief Tuhin Kanta Pandey delivered his address. The FM delivered hers. Somewhere in between, a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India put on a Punjabi Bhangra costume and danced.
Guess which part people are still talking about?
The Speeches: A Masterclass in Saying Nothing
Let us begin with the addresses. Both speeches were, to deploy the most generous word available, comprehensive. T+1 settlement was mentioned. ASBA was applauded. UPI-linked IPOs received their obligatory moment of reverence. The corporate bond market was summoned, examined, found wanting, and sent back with homework. Municipal bonds made a cameo. Cybersecurity got its own paragraph, which featured the sentence "tools of attack are evolving at high speed, and the tools of defence must evolve even faster" — a line that would survive comfortably in any regulatory document produced anywhere on earth since approximately 2009.
One gentleman in the audience was reportedly spotted reading linkedin chats, during the speeches, which, upon reflection, may have been the most efficient use of time in the room.
To be fair, there were numbers. 366 IPOs in FY 2025-26 (hmmm). ₹1.9 lakh crore raised (yawn). Over 90 percent success rate in the Supreme Court (needs some digging). NSDL and CDSL holding dematerialised securities worth over $5 trillion (ok). These are genuinely remarkable achievements (SEBI's?) delivered in the tone of someone reading out ingredients on a cereal box.
"Better markets, not merely bigger markets," said the FM, stirringly, to a hall full of people who regulate markets. The applause was polite. The kind of applause that happens when 500 people simultaneously remember they are supposed to clap.
KYC simplification was urged. Global consultations were urged. Principles-based regulation was urged. Municipal bonds were urged. One attendee reportedly leaned over to a colleague and whispered, "Is anything actually happening, or are we urging our way to Viksit Bharat?" The colleague, wisely, said nothing.
Pandey himself spoke with the calm authority of a man who has never once sent a 11:45 PM email marked urgent — and is quite proud of it. Every sentence was balanced. Every suggestion was measured. Every recommendation was, in the precise clinical sense of the word, reasonable. The audience listened. The audience nodded. Several audience members may have briefly achieved a meditative state.
The seating arrangements, meanwhile, told their own quiet story. Brokers and representatives of ANMI — the NSE brokers' association — were seated ahead of former SEBI officials and veterans in the front rows. The old guards of Indian markets regulation, men and women who built the institution across decades, found themselves behind the very intermediaries they once supervised. Whether this was an oversight of event management or a statement about who SEBI's most valued audience is these days, nobody said out loud. Nobody needed to.
Production values
SEBI, the institution that regulates how India's companies spend their shareholders' money, insiders say, spent in the region of ₹5 crore on this Foundation Day extravaganza. Five crore rupees. For a birthday party. For themselves. To be fair, the Jio Convention Centre's Jasmine Hall does not come cheap, and Bollywood-adjacent cultural programmes featuring dancing regulators don't organise themselves. One imagines the line item in the internal budget reads simply: "Nation building." The irony of a market regulator spending ₹5 crore to urge others toward fiscal prudence is the kind of thing that would make a very good SEBI show-cause notice — if only SEBI could send one to itself.
And Then, The Real Show
Then came the cultural programme.
SEBI employees — the same people who spend their days scrutinising offer documents and issuing show-cause notices — took to the stage for Bollywood performances. The hall, which had maintained the dignified temperature of a compliance seminar, suddenly remembered it had a pulse.
And there, among the dancers, resplendent in full Punjabi Bhangra regalia, was Kamlesh Varshney. Whole-time Member (1990-batch IRS officer), Board-level functionary. Regulator of securities markets. Doing bhangra.
To his very considerable credit: the man committed. This was not the awkward side-step of a senior official reluctantly present at an office party. This was participation. This was joy. This was a whole-time member of SEBI expressing himself in a manner that no SEBI circular has ever quite managed to express anything.
The audience, which had been urgently urged at for the better part of an hour, erupted. Here, finally, was substance. Here was transparency. Here was a regulator with nothing to hide — certainly not his dance moves.
Someone should timestamp the exact moment the hall went from "respectful attention" to "actual enthusiasm." It coincided precisely with the dhol.
Life After Madhabi: The Great Sedation
It would be remiss not to acknowledge the elephant — or rather, the conspicuous absence of a very particular elephant — in the room.
Madhabi Puri Buch departed SEBI in February last year. Whatever one's views on her tenure — and there are many views, ranging across a very colourful spectrum — nobody could accuse her of running a quiet shop. Under Madhabi, SEBI was appointment television. Regulations emerged at a pace suggesting the chairperson had simply decided sleep was for lesser regulators. Enforcement actions arrived without warning. Fin-fluencers wept. Consultation papers dropped like monsoon rain. Controversies arrived on their own schedule, uninvited and unafraid.
Staff staged dharnas. Memos flew. Employees were reportedly recalled mid-vacation over typos. The brand of your morning toothpaste was not beyond her awareness. It was, depending entirely on your relationship with anxiety, either exhilarating or exhausting.
SEBI under Madhabi was chaos with a purpose — loud, controversial, occasionally bewildering, but never boring.
SEBI under Tuhin Kanta Pandey is a carefully organised filing cabinet. Everything in its place. Every initiative properly consulted upon. Every stakeholder duly engaged. Every speech professionally delivered and promptly forgotten.
Where Madhabi kept employees on their toes, Pandey has let them lose tip-toeing. The corridors of BKC are reportedly hushed. Consultation papers are issued on schedule. Stakeholders are consulted in the proper sequence. Nobody is being dramatically summoned anywhere at any hour. The collective jaw of SEBI's staff, which spent years firmly clenched, has now fully unclenched — and somewhere in that unclenching, so has all the drama, the energy, and frankly, the narrative.
SEBI has gone from a soap opera to a government gazette notification. Technically correct. Thoroughly unreadable.
The Takeaway
Here is what SEBI's 38th Foundation Day actually demonstrated, inadvertently and magnificently:
The speeches told us what SEBI has done, what SEBI must do, and what SEBI is urged to urgently consider doing. The dance performance showed us what SEBI is — an organisation of human beings who, when given half a chance, will absolutely put on Bhangra costumes and perform with visible delight in front of 500 people and the Finance Minister.
One of these things built institutional credibility. The other built the only moment of the evening anyone will remember past Monday.
Kamlesh Varshney, if you are reading this: the markets may be complex, the challenges may be structural, the bond market may need deepening — but you, sir, did not need to be urged. You simply danced.
In a SEBI that has become very, very good at standing still... that counts for something. That, in the end, is leadership.
Matter of the Press
Journalists — those inconvenient witnesses to power — were politely but firmly escorted out of the hall after the cultural programme, despite the event being scheduled for a full day. The message was clear: you may watch us celebrate, but you may not linger. The Finance Minister, for her part, made a departure so swift and security-escorted that reporters couldn't get a word in. Not a comment on policy. Not a quote on markets. Not even — and this is the part that stings — an answer to whether she enjoyed the song and dance. Nirmala Sitharaman, keeper of the national budget, could not spare thirty seconds to tell the press if she liked the bhangra. The fourth estate was left standing in the corridor, notebooks open, staring at a closed door. Classic SEBI. They'll happily nudge journalists to cover their achievements. The party, however, is strictly family.
The author attended the speech and performance and is therefore perfectly positioned to have opinions about both.
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