Some of the excellent recommendations made by the 13th Finance Commission that are worth studying: 1. The commission has dumped numerical targets in favour of qualitative ones for the fiscal and revenue deficits. The deficits are to go up in the downswing of a business cycle and come down on the upswing — all the way to a surplus in the case of the revenue deficit — with a council of wise mean moderating any inclination on the part of the government of the day to declare a downswing when there is only an election on the horizon.

The commission has focused on the government’s liabilities as a proportion of GDP