The microphone is always on. You’d think by now, in an era where every pocket hides a 4K camera and every "private" huddle is just one hot-mic away from a PR nightmare, the political class would learn to whisper. But they don’t. They can't help themselves.

In Karnataka, the latest acoustic casualty is a cabinet minister who decided that the best way to describe his own party’s MLAs was "street dogs." Classy. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue so much as a loud, resonant belch of the internal hierarchy that defines the state’s ruling Congress party.

The comment didn't just land; it detonated. It sparked a fresh leadership row that the High Command in Delhi—currently busy trying to figure out how to be an opposition that actually opposes—really didn't need. The optics are, to put it mildly, garbage. You have a government trying to project a unified front while its own lieutenants are busy comparing the rank-and-file to stray canines fighting over scraps.

It’s a classic power play masked as a verbal blunder. In the ecosystem of Vidhana Soudha, language is rarely accidental. When a minister uses a derogatory animal metaphor, he isn't just venting; he's marking territory. He’s reminding the backbenchers exactly where they sit on the food chain. The message is simple: stay in your lane, wag your tail when told, and don’t bite the hand that doles out the cabinet berths.

But the backbenchers aren't playing along. Not this time.

The fallout has been immediate and messy. We’re seeing the usual theater of outrage—MLAs rushing to news cameras with hurt expressions, demanding apologies that everyone knows will be hollow. The friction here isn't just about hurt feelings. It’s about the underlying, vibrating tension between the Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar camps. Every time a minister opens his mouth and says something stupid, it’s interpreted as a proxy strike by one faction against the other. It’s a game of political Tetris where the blocks are made of ego and they never quite fit.

The price tag for this kind of "unforced error" is high. It drains the political capital of a government that’s already trying to juggle massive "guarantee" schemes with a thinning treasury. Every hour spent managing a "street dog" headline is an hour not spent figuring out why Bengaluru’s infrastructure still looks like a set from a disaster movie every time it drizzles.

The tech-adjacent irony isn't lost on anyone who lives in the silicon capital. While we’re debating AI ethics and 6G rollouts in the boardrooms of Indiranagar, the people running the show are using 19th-century feudal insults to keep their teams in check. It’s a jarring disconnect. We have a digital-first economy governed by a "don’t-talk-back-to-the-landlord" political culture.

The Minister’s defense—if you can call it that—was the standard "my words were twisted" routine. It’s the ultimate gaslighting tool of the modern politician. They say the thing, we hear the thing, the recording plays the thing, and then they tell us our ears are malfunctioning. It’s a bug in the democratic software that nobody seems interested in patching.

Meanwhile, the opposition is feasting. They don't have to do much. They just have to point at the screen and laugh. When your opponent is busy calling his own supporters mongrels, you can just sit back, keep your own mouth shut for once, and watch the poll numbers fluctuate.

The "street dog" remark is just the latest data point in a trend of deteriorating political discourse that feels increasingly algorithmic. It’s designed to trigger an immediate, visceral reaction, drown out substantive policy debate, and reinforce tribal loyalties. It’s the political equivalent of clickbait. It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it leaves everyone involved feeling slightly greasier.

So, the leadership row escalates. The High Command will likely issue a "stern warning," which is the political version of a "Thoughts and Prayers" tweet. There will be a photo-op of the warring factions smiling thinly at each other while holding bouquets of flowers that look like they’re being used as blunt instruments.

The question isn't whether the minister will apologize. He will, or he’ll "clarify" until the original meaning is buried under layers of rhetorical sludge. The real question is how many more of these internal fractures the Congress can paper over before the whole structure just stops pretending to be a unified government and starts looking like what it actually is: a collection of independent contractors who happen to share a logo.

It’s a long way to the next election. Plenty of time for more metaphors. One wonders what animal they’ll pick for the voters next.