Steal a little and they throw you in prison, steal a lot and they make you king," drawled America's bard. This was long before a pr conspiracy tried to thrust that awful outdated title-'king'-onto that hapless creature otherwise referred to as the 'customer'. Just as well that the enlightened customer has preferred being a sort of equal-citizen, no more, no less: insistent on the right to information.

If there have been people who have tried to exalt themselves above the law, thwart the flow of information, and cushion themselves beyond all bounds of moral justification, a shocking number of them are to be found in positions of high authority at the top of business hierarchies. The worst of them have played havoc with the well-being of customers, employees, shareholders and assorted business associates, often leaving a painful trail of bankruptcies in their wake. But they still seem to believe that if it's crime you must commit, make sure it's white-collar.

The sad part: this is something you can say again. If it's crime you must commit, make sure it's white-collar. The sadder part, still, is that in a country as legally self-muddled as India, this is something you need not just say again, you can actually thrive on it, laughing all the way to the... whatever. There is safety in the knowledge that few people have enough financial and business knowledge to make a clear distinction between guilt and innocence.

Accountability questions typically arise long after the worst excesses are buried under so much paper, that just picking the trails could be a nightmare for the best of detectives. Global Trust Bank had forfeited the literal meanings of the words in its name long ago. Ramesh Gelli, the main force behind this private sector bank, was faced with various allegations, including a 2001 stock-rigging plot involving the infamous market operator Ketan Parekh, that wrecked the bank's merger prospects with UTI Bank. Circumstantial or not, the indications back then were of a bank that would go bust. So it has. Legally culpable or not, Gelli surely has much to account for.

It is about time white-collar crime in India got the attention it deserves. It is also about time that the country broke the inverse correlation between the severity of punishment and the guilty's financial standing.

While the US is no paragon of virtue on matters of justice, given its unedifying treatment of non-American prisoners, it is a country that still tends to demand high standards of probity from its own rich and powerful. Martha Stewart, the celebrity businesswoman, has recently got five months in the slammer for transgressions that sound laughable in India: saving a few thousand dollars by selling shares on a tip-off, and then trying to mumble her way out in defence. Under the glare of actual law, she found herself guilty of not just 'insider trading' but also 'obstruction of justice'. Lying under oath is a serious felony, regardless of collar colour.

Sure, one could argue that Stewart's case was too simple not to reach conviction. But even the most complicated of white-collar crimes can be unraveled once investigators put their mind to it. For years, Enron was regarded as some sort of innovative superhero-till it imploded, and Andrew Fastow's intricate off-the-books deals found no further place to hide. Even less open-and-shut was the case of Nick Leeson, the Singapore-based 'rogue trader' of Barings Bank who destroyed his firm by taking what may be regarded as careless rather than criminal gambles on the futures market. But Leeson was nabbed for a wilful pattern of internal data falsification.

White-collar crime can be stopped. It's just a matter of people recognising the long-term danger posed by slipshod justice to the economy. Preachy but true: prosperity cannot be sustained, let alone be generated, if the country's rich and powerful see too little risk in flouting the law.