index
starts from Zero, and the length
Property for a non-empty element starts from 1.
Jquery index
method Searches for a given element from among the matched elements.
From Jquery Documentation
If a selector string is passed as an argument, .index() returns an
integer indicating the position of the first element within the jQuery
object relative to the elements matched by the selector. If the
element is not found, .index() will return -1.
In most Programming languages, the index starts from 0. So, the index returned would be always 1 less than the actual number.