It appears Karnataka is no longer run by politicians, but by honeybees — and not the kind that make honey, but the kind that trap you in it. 

Co-operation Minister K.N. Rajanna recently claimed that 48 MLAs in the State have been honey trapped and demanded an investigation. 

Clearly, the bees are buzzing and someone’s been dipping where they shouldn’t.

The irony? This wasn’t even a revelation by the Opposition, they only triggered the conversation.

BJP MLA Basangouda Patil Yatnal hinted that someone was luring legislators into sticky situations and in a rare moment of political unity, Congress didn’t deny it. In fact, they nodded and raised the stakes.

According to Congress Minister Rajanna, Karnataka is now “a factory for CDs and pen drives.” Not IT exports, mind you — but political erotica!

Things then took a nosedive into the truly absurd as both sides started debating whose honey trap factory was better! 

The BJP claimed two honey trapping operations were running. Rajanna retorted, “Is there one on your side and one on ours? If you say who runs your factory, we can reveal who runs ours.” 

Watching the proceedings in Vidhana Soudha yesterday, it didn’t seem like a place of serious business of governance, it seemed more like a ‘poli katte’ — a place where local boys sit around talking dirty. 

While the State swims in Rs. 3 lakh crore worth of debt, our leaders are more interested in each other’s sex lives. Tragic.

As Karnataka film industry is called sandalwood, it would be appropriate to term our politics as ‘scandal-wood.’

Karnataka politics has always been seedy. We are first in the worst strategy in grabbing political power in a democracy — from resort politics to CD politics. 

In 1983, Ramakrishna Hegde, who led the Janata Party in Karnataka fearing a threat to topple his Government by Indira Gandhi, had hidden his MLAs.

Soon, ‘resort politics’ wasn’t just a tactic, it was a brand. A JD(S) leader proudly told the Economic Times, “We set the trend and now resort politics has become the norm.” Wah! What a thing to be proud of !  

This is the typical mindset in our country where such acts are seen as being ‘clever’ or ‘Chanakyatana’ instead of being seen as unethical.

But if resort politics was act one, CD culture is act two — steamier, sleazier and shockingly recurrent.

 It all began in 1973 itself when R.D. Kittur, a Minister in the Congress-led Devaraj Urs Government, was forced to resign after accusations that he was sheltering a missing woman. He stepped down due to allegations of ‘impropriety’.

We have so many sex CDs that they now have limited effect. Public outrage is short-lived and the damage is not long-term if             managed well.

We remember the ‘Kissing-charya.’ In 2007 BJP MLA and former Minister M.P. Renukacharya faced harassment allegations from a nurse, with photographic evidence. There was initial trouble but he still went on to become a Minister.

In 2012, three BJP Ministers — Laxman Savadi, Krishna Palemar and C.C. Patil —were caught watching adult content inside the Legislative Assembly. The media and public were outraged and the Ministers resigned. But after some time, they returned to politics.

 More recently in 2021, Ramesh Jarkiholi, former Minister and BJP MLA, stepped down after a leaked video allegedly showed him asking for sexual favours in return for a Government job. He too is back in business.

And now, pen drives — those once-innocent storage devices — have become tools of               political sabotage.

They have become ammunitions used to penetrate one’s way into political success. These pen drives can drill holes so deep in one’s political career it takes a while to get back up. 

Then we have the self-penetrators, into their political careers, like the case of Prajwal Revanna who produced, directed and starred in his own POV-style video. For the uninitiated, that’s ‘Point-Of-View’ (POV) — a porn genre where the performer shoots the action himself.

As the honey trap narrative grows stickier and politicians point fingers while dipping them into jars they shouldn’t, one is forced to ask: Why taste the honey if you’re afraid of the sting?

Unlike in the West, Indian media still hesitates to dive deep into the private indulgences of its netas. But maybe it’s time we did. Maybe it’s time we showed the public just how their tax money funds not just rallies and posters, but luxury homes, cars and sex.

For now, with sex CDs and pen drives being essential tools in Karnataka’s political arsenal, the only people truly getting screwed… are the tax-paying citizens.

e-mail: vikram@starofmysore.com