When New York City—the world’s billionaire capital and command centre of a $55 trillion market economy—elected a democratic socialist as mayor on November 4, 2025, it stunned observers worldwide. Against the odds of a bruising, multimillion-dollar campaign bankrolled by billionaire patrons, voters chose conviction over capital by a large margin. The tremor of victory reverberated far beyond America’s borders. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman and son of Ugandan-Indian scholar Mahmood Mamdani and Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair, defeated political heavyweight Andrew Cuomo to become the first South Asian-American Muslim mayor of New York. For a metropolis long synonymous with Wall Street capitalism, his triumph was more than a political upset—it marked a moral turning point, a redirection of the city’s compass from profit to principle.
Mamdani’s ancestry traced a remarkable arc across continents. His forebears migrated from Gujarat to East Africa as traders under British rule. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, was among thousands of South Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972, later rising as one of Africa’s leading post-colonial thinkers. His mother, Mira Nair, born in India and educated at Harvard, became an acclaimed filmmaker. Their son was born in Kampala in 1991, moved to New York at age seven. Before entering politics, he worked as a housing counsellor, helping tenants fight eviction—an experience that inspired his campaign slogan: Housing is a human right.
He joined the Democratic Socialists of America and entered state politics in 2020, quickly becoming a voice for tenants, workers, and transit users. His mayoral platform was unapologetically progressive: fare-free buses, rent freezes, universal childcare, and a gradual rise of the minimum wage to $30 by 2030—financed through higher taxes on corporations and millionaires. Critics called it utopian; supporters called it humane. What sounded radical in the citadel of finance resonated with ordinary New Yorkers exhausted by inequality and living costs. When ballots were counted, the city that shelters more billionaires than any other had chosen a candidate who rides the subway and speaks for wage earners.
In a world where identity and religion often dominated discourse, Mamdani’s message of economic fairness and dignity of labour found cross-ethnic appeal. That shift held lessons for Bangladesh, where faith and faction often eclipse justice. Dhaka’s realities echoed New York’s in miniature: rising rents, congestion, and widening income gaps. The recent eruptions of labour unrest in Gazipur and Narayanganj over wage disparity were reminders of what happens when grievances fester. If the world’s richest city could debate rent justice and free public transit, developing cities could too—adapted to local realities.
