Enforcing Fiscal Discipline Renuka Viswanathan The Second Report of the Ninth Finance Commission is generously peppered with ominous allusions to prudence, tax effort, discipline, etc. Without saying so directly, the commission appears to have accepted the undeniable fact that its predecessors had not paid sufficient attention to encouraging fiscal restraint, despite professions to the contrary It is, therefore, useful to examine the commissions's report from this specific viewpoint and determine to what extent the commission has lived up to its own objectives of promoting fiscal discipline and discouraging excesses.