Of course, PRETENDING to care about retail investor is just a cover for doing whatever they want, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big futures-players are pushing for raising the lot-sizes so that they'd have a bigger edge over the retail traders with respect to their capital; plus, the government is probably greedy for more STT money.
True but there are still contracts that are between 5-10 lacs, which will also go up further if this proposal goes through, & I presume the average price of an F&O contract would be closer to 15 lacs whereas it might be closer to 7-8 lacs right now.
And, it's funny how they talk up "speculation" as the bogeyman, & try to pretend that "investing" somehow doesn't involve speculating about the future of a company, which is inherently uncertain; so, "investing" isn't like Fixed-Deposits or something, & hence it is inherently speculative just like trading, the only difference being that investing involves speculation over a longer term whereas traders "speculate" in the short-term. Moreover, trading & speculating is what brings in the liquidity, which allows investors to enter & exit the markets with lower impact costs due to tighter spreads, so making things unprofitable for short-term traders also hurts the long-term investors.