I know about India. I think the most damage was in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, Thailand. It's hard to tell, but the numbers seem to jump so much in short spaces of time. It's only been a few days and the situation may still be very confused because we're talking about several countries, not just one. Pictures and constant analysis and replays on television just doesn't do justice. So, it's hard to know.
Apparently they built breakwaters around one or more of the larger islands after some floods in the 80's and that helped, but still, when you consider Somalia is twice as far away, is continental and not just low-lying islands, and still had almost twice the death toll, the Maldives did relatively OK.