It was purely coincidental that the extremist Tamil Tigers leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed and his movement decimated at the same time as India was voting. But the significance should not be missed.

The link between low growth and the importance of inheritance, Piketty argues, was not coincidental with inherited wealth yielding 2 3 a year and new investment only 1 , social mobility was extremely limited and stratification was encouraged.

While I am not in a position to verify all these reports and allegations, initial impressions suggest that the great number of reports and related allegations cannot be seen as merely coincidental, as they seem to indicate a pattern of misdeeds that call for immediate redress.

Coming on the heels of Yushchenko's alleged poisoning, the timing of the move against Tymoshenko appears to be anything but coincidental. Indeed, the case was reopened while Yushchenko was hospitalized thus threatening to decapitate the opposition with barely a month to go before the presidential election on October 31.