? A massive earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hit Indonesia off the west coast of Sumatra on the morning of December 26,2004, at 6:58 a.m. Another earthquake of magnitude 7.3 occurred 81km west of Pulo Kunji (Great Nicobar, India) at 9:51 a.m. on the same day. The earthquakes set off giant tsunamis three to 10 metres high, which travelled 2,000km across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal.
In 2002-2004, Karnataka's S.M. Krishna government blamed farmers' suicides on alcoholism and gambling. This time around, the authorities cannot ignore the bitter harvest and its aftermath. In Bidar district alone, 48 farmers have killed themselves since July 2006. All of them were sugarcane cultivators. .News of suicides is trickling in from Gulbarga, Gadag, Mandya and Chamarajanagar.
