But will this embarrass Delhi’s authorities? By all accounts, it was clear in February that FIFA was contemplating pulling the knockout matches out of Delhi due to pollution concerns. The city’s authorities did not do anything to convey that they have an action plan to deal with the post-Diwali smog, at least nothing to show that they were trying to deal with the problem on a war footing and allay the fears of football’s governing body. But then the authorities have always been as thick-skinned about disapproval by international bodies as they have been about the Supreme Court’s reprimands. Authorities, both at the Centre and the state, are known to scoff at WHO rankings which score Delhi poorly on air quality parameters. Compare this to China which declared a war on pollution after the International Olympic Committee expressed concerns over Beijing’s poor air quality, and primed itself in time for the 2008 Olympics.
The efficacy of the Chinese measures to control pollution after 2008 have been debated and Indian authorities often argue that Beijing is not out of the WHO list of polluted cities. They similarly have little regard for the State of Global Air report released last month, which showed India lost more people to air pollution compared to China in 2015. Given this record of obduracy, a loss of an Under-17 football event is unlikely to rankle much.
