With a record rise in the number of fatal road accidents involving underage drivers, the police and courts of law in the bustling cities of India have swung into high gear to punish their parents in a new strategy for beating the growing menace. Not long ago, the law enforcement authorities, who hitherto let off the errant minors with a slap on the wrist by asking them to cough up only a fine of Rs. 500, shocked the country by imprisoning parents of some 70 teenagers for one to three days in Hyderabad.

   The guardians were jailed for the first time for allowing their school-going children to drive cars, scooters and motorcycles on busy public roads without a valid license, and several other well-heeled vehicle owners are likely to be put behind bars in many other cities. September, indeed, started with a bloody note with a middle-aged pedestrian fatally knocked down by a teenybopper riding a swanky scooter in Punjab’s industrial city of....