White Elephant
When it comes to hosting the FIFA (football) World Cup, countries are usually falling over themselves to own, as per this article by Ravi Dev , the white elephant. Hosting a World Cup is very expensive. For not so rich countries, the sums involved are enough “to completely transform a (host) country’s political and economic agenda”! Take “Brazil’s over-budget World Cup”, says Dev: it’s estimated to cost more than $13.5 billion, the most expensive World Cup till date. Now consider that Brazil is similar to India in terms of how well off it is, and you’d wonder whether that money would have been better spent on, I don’t know, roads or hospitals or schools? Or consider the weird case of selecting Qatar as the venue for 2022. The estimates there would blow you away: $200 billion! Why the astronomical sum, you wonder? The venue for the final, Lusail, is a city that is yet to be built! No, not a typo: the city is going to be built for the World Cup and will cost $45 billion. Why FI...