Mexico City and Delhi are subject to strong shaking from large/great plate-boundary, thrust earthquakes located at distances exceeding ~250 km, and from moderate/large local and regional earthquakes. Since 1985 Michoacan earthquake (Mw8), which caused severe damage and loss of lives in Mexico City, our capability of ground-motion estimation in the Valley of Mexico from future earthquakes has greatly improved. A seismic alert system has been in operation since 1992 which provides ~60s of alert time to the city before the arrival of intense ground motion. Based on real-time recording at a reference station in the city and known transfer functions of hundreds of sites, shake maps are available within ~5 minutes of the arrival of S waves. Seismic instrumentation in Delhi is sparse. Our knowledge of local and regional seismicity and seismotectonics therefore remains poor, and estimation of ground motions and site effects are subject to large uncertainty. We illustrate some of these deficiencies from an analysis of the well-recorded Delhi earthquake of 25 November 2007 (Mw4.1).