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After the tragic of two fans outside Gelora Bung Karno on Monday at the Southeast Asian Games final between Indonesia and Malaysia, the Indonesian Football Association announced it would give Rp 10 million ($1,100) in compensation to the families of the victims.

Inasoc, the organizing committee for the event, also announced it would provide compensation. A human life is worth $1,100? 

The big questions are who, if anyone, is to blame and what can be done to stop this kind of thing happening again. 

The stadium was full that night, with some reports suggesting there were up to 100,000 fans inside. For reasons known only to themselves, the organizers had set up large TVs outside the stadium so fans could watch the game there.

Have these people ever seen 100,000 people trying to leave the Bung Karno after a match? Having large crowds gathered around TV screens would have just added to the congestion and confusion, and putting them up in the area of the stadium was folly of the highest order.

Indonesia has hosted the Asian Cup and two AFF Cups in recent years, and yet it still finds itself incapable of organizing ticketing and security for a large crowd. Everything breaks down when large crowds converge on a small area demanding entry and refuse to do basic things like queue and be patient. People push and shove, the small get pushed to the ground and trampled on. A metaphor for life here?

At the early games in the tournament, stewards and security far outnumbered paying fans and crowd control was easy. When only a dozen or so showed up, it was easy for people at the gate to check bags and tickets. But with a crush building up with people shouting and queue-jumping, it falls apart.

There are lessons out there on how to arrange ticket sales for big games. If nobody expected big crowds for Indonesia in the semifinal and final, then the wrong people were doing the job.

Go to any FA Cup final, World Cup final or Champions League final and you won’t find tickets on sale at the stadium on the day. Everything is done in advance.

Obviously it’s easier when you have several days, weeks or months to prepare. When the semifinals are on Saturday and the final on Monday, there is less time.

Surely from the players’ point of view, at least there should have been a longer break between semis and final. That, too, would have allowed organizers to roll out ticket sales across Jakarta at a number of venues, not inconvenience the public by having people flock to the stadium for a few hours.

The whole thing about mob violence is that it feeds off the mob, hence damaged ticket booths the day before the final.

Lessons are out there to be learned, but it appears no one wants to learn the lessons. Probably because no one wants to pay the extra costs involved. The same mistakes get repeated, and a human life gets valued at a bit over a thousand dollars.