Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Member Parliament from Bathinda today forcefully raised the issue of bad portrayal of politicians in textbooks of NCERT besides constant bashing of politicians in media especially on news channels just to enhance the TRP during zero hour in Parliament. Harsimrat Kaur Badal said that recent cartoon controversy was not an isolated incident; the politicians were constantly branded as looters, criminals and murderers by media and electronic channels just to enhance their TRP. She said that the movies like Rajniti and Ishaqjaade were the prominent examples. She said that as per public perception there was a wave of revulsion in the country against politicians and anyone who describes them ‘looters, murderers and criminals’, the public seems to love it. The Member Parliament pointed out that, yesterday, the Hon’ble Speaker said that we were celebrating the 60 years of our democracy, the little plant of parliamentary democracy had now become a big tree but we seriously need to look at what we were doing to the very roots of this parliamentary democracy. Showing her deep concern, she said that what would happen to those ideals set forth by our seniors by giving up all their comforts just to serve the under privileged besides taking up the movements and fights for the common man. Making a scathing attack on UPA government, Badal said that this government had made a laughing stock of their own leaders and of revered leaders of other parties. Taking up the issue of a recent cartoon controversy, she lamented that how the UPA government have poisoned the minds of crores of children over the last six to seven years, which can’t be ever set right. The Member Parliament said that we can’t control what the television shows or newspapers write or the movies show or magazines write. But if impressionable minds of 30 years old were being shown cartoons like ‘the politician treating the voter like a hungry dog, showing him Rotis and then gun-toting politicians’ then who was responsible for that and how we can correct it? Badal said that during the Anna Hazare’s dharna, she noticed that hundreds of school children were actively participating in the movement against corruption and speaking openly against politicians and the political system. It had not only saddened and disappointed her but also left her wondering as to the reason why they did it. She said that as a 12-year child, she remembers reading about great leaders who were actually role models for us, starting from Pandit ji to Mahatma ji to Maulana Azad. It shocked her that today youngsters were not looking up to politicians but were actually holding them in very poor light. Sharing her personal experience she said that she recently got a chance to interact with young school children aging between 13 years and 15 years from Class IX to class XII and asked them the reason for this sense of disgust. She started by asking them as to how they would like to participate in nation building and how many of them would like to serve the country as politicians but none of the 100 students present wanted to be a politician and asked “Why would any of us want to be a part of you looters, criminals, murderers and thieves”? She said that we were talking about the Right to Education, but if we do not look at the quality of education we were imparting, we were not only harming the country, but also we were weakening this very democracy. She urged the august House that the responsibility should be fixed for cartoon fiasco and demanded a time bound strict action.