A question unanswered

Yesterday, a fire broke out in Qatar. Seven poor Nepali youths, who probably work as labourers, died.

First things first, Qatar is a small country. Not much happens here. While, in India, a fire story, even if three or four die, may not even be carried, and if at all it is, it will be hidden somewhere in the corner of the inside pages, in Qatar it's a big thing.

It is a big thing.

Only here, unlike in India, where apparently people die everyday, and at least newspapers or news channels don't value lost lives, unless its the life of a big businessman or a politician, or a gay man, whose murder story can create a huge sensation coz they'll get a chance to dig out his personal life and hence there'll be 'sex' in the story, and hence the paper will be bought more... here, in a country of 850,000 people, even though people die quite often, either in road accidents, or industrial mishaps, or suicides... the news is carried.

Maybe you can say, there are fewer things happening so if you don't carry this on the pages what else will you carry. Maybe you can say we don't have better things to write about.

You may even be right when you say that.

But the point is, either way, it's serving the purpose. Be it because of lesser things to write, fewer things happening, the newspapers at least in this regard carry what should be carried. - lives lost - it's a big thing when a man dies - it doesn't matter who the man is.

Now the question.

Why is it that in most cases of fires or floods or whatever other disasters, it's always the poor ones that die?

Why don't we ever hear of a Shah Rukh Khan, or a Sushmita Sen dying when a wall collapsed on their heads while they were signing a Karan Johar film?