The finance industry is in turmoil. Tax collections have hit stall speed. India’s credit and fiscal crises are joined at the hip. Consider the $13 billion in past fees that the government is asking from telecom operators, a Bloomberg View reported. It’s a desperate attempt to squeeze money from an industry in which most players have already vanished or gone bankrupt. The two old firms that are still standing amid intense price competition from newcomer Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. will bear the brunt of the recently court-approved demand. Among them, Vodafone Idea Ltd.

When Arun Sarin, Vodafone Group Plc’s India-born former CEO, was charting the British telecommunications firm’s expansion into emerging markets in the mid-2000s, his home country with more than a billion potential phone users seemed a compelling choice. Sarin wasn’t alone. Norway’s Telenor ASA, Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems PJSC and Malaysia’s Maxis Bhd were also among a slew of companies that flocked to this fast-growing market, Bloomberg News reported. The carriers banded with local partners, bid for airwaves and licenses, spending billions of dollars to prepare their networks.

The government in India has pumped $37 billion into ailing banks in the past three years. Lenders have been forced into mergers, and the central bank has wrested more than a dozen companies from the control of tycoons who defaulted on their debt, Bloomberg News reported. But cleaning up the financial system has been like playing whack-a-mole. India’s banks still sit on the biggest pile of bad loans, relative to total loans, among the major economies. They’re about 9% of debts.

At the turn of the millennium, a group of entrepreneurs in their twenties banded together in a cramped office near a New Delhi bus terminal to start what they hoped would be India’s answer to Charles Schwab, the Financial Times reported. Almost two decades later, founder Sameer Gehlaut — the son of a politician and army officer, once dubbed India’s youngest billionaire — and longtime executive Gagan Banga have more than achieved their dream, turning their company Indiabulls into one of the country’s most prominent financial groups.

The NCLAT has dismissed a plea to initiate insolvency proceedings against smartphone and mobile accessories maker Intex Technologies India Ltd by one of its creditors, Business Standard reported. A three-member NCLAT bench headed by Chairperson Justice S J Mukhopadhaya upheld the order of the NCLT Delhi, which had dismissed the plea of the operational creditor after observing a pre-existence of dispute over the claims.

The number of insolvency cases admitted by the bankruptcy court continued to stay elevated, with 369 companies alone admitted in the September quarter, Business Standard reported. The March quarter of FY19 had seen the highest number (374) taken by the Benches of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), revealed data by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI). The number of firms to go for liquidation in Q2FY20 stood at 96.

India can take more steps to be competitive in the global market, such as enforcing contracts, World Bank President David Malpass said. “There can be more progress in land permits and in enforcement of contracts,” Malpass said at a press conference in New Delhi on Saturday, Bloomberg News reported. “Other countries in Asia have done pretty well.” India jumped 14 places to 63rd in the World Bank’s annual rankings for ease of doing business released Thursday, helped by a new insolvency law.

ICICI Bank Ltd., India’s second-largest private lender, posted a lower than expected profit due to a one-time income tax adjustment, Bloomberg News reported. Net income fell 28% to 6.55 billion rupees ($98 million) for the three months ended Sept. 30 from 9.1 billion rupees a year earlier, the lender said Saturday. The profit compared with analysts expectation of 13.8 billion rupees on average, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

India’s top court ordered several telecom carriers, including Bharti Airtel Ltd., Vodafone Idea Ltd. and many defunct ones, to pay the government as much as 920 billion rupees ($13 billion) in past dues, dealing a blow to the businesses already struggling to make profits and pare debt, Bloomberg News reported. The Supreme Court, in a ruling read out by a two-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, said it will decide on the timeline for payments. Thursday’s decision possibly puts an end to the two-decades-old legal dispute over airwaves fees owed to the government.

Suspend your disbelief, and like the protagonist of the popular Bollywood movie “3 idiots,” keep muttering: “All is well, all is well.” If it isn’t yet, it will be. That seems to be the whole approach behind the ongoing efforts to restructure an Indian financier, Dewan Housing Finance Corp., which some months back started defaulting on its outstanding debt of $12 billion, a Bloomberg View reported. Trouble is, the rescue is entirely fictional. The only reason it’s even being attempted is to delay — as long as possible —  the collapse of this large shadow lender.