Media bias, that's all. One country is shaping up to be a formidable foe so certain groups are desperately trying to highlight, amplify, and exaggerate everything for a chance to shit on them. The other country is a quasi-ally not even remotely close to posing a challenge so barely any attention is given.

Probably not the only cause, but look at population density in India, it's insane.

https://pudding.cool/2018/10/city_3d/

I think India's issue can be attributed to whether large pollutants are closer or within larger cities [citation needed] and the fact that biomass is usually burnt by its population in large scale.

I don't think it's a surprise.

I always heard that surprisingly they could top China on some days - apparently poor farming practices involving mass burns could make it seasonally extra bad.

Given their reputation of being farming, IT/call centers, and chemical/plastic factories as opposed to heavy industrial China - granted both are more nuanced than the stereotypes because they are nations of over a billion and a third each. If you ask about them having a non-fictional industry the answer is probably yes.

Between slumdog millionaire and all the episodes of the amazing race that have taken place in India, it's no surprise to me.

I don't see why anyone would expect any extremely poor, heavily populated, industrializing area to not be very polluted.

It was surprising to me. However, only the first page is dominated by India. Most of the cities in the next 3-4 pages are in China.

If you look at cities yea but on a country level, India fall third behind Bangladesh and Pakistan. China is at the 12th place and all the countries in between are somewhat surprising