SQLAlchemy has a lot more power than Django's ORM. I'd argue that Django's ORM is more accessible to beginner SQL users though. Django handles joins for you (which admittedly breaks down with very complex queries) which is the only ORM I'm aware of that does. SQLAlchemy maps much more closely to SQL and is a tighter abstraction.

A GSOC project is currently adding customisable indexes: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/django-developers/XA...