By Don Aguiar

Mumbai, Nov 15, 2025: Journalists and commentators have noticed that has helped boost Mamdani’s appeal among New Yorkers. He has what the New York Times called “a rare talent for listening.”

Mamdani is unusually reflective in interviews, often thinking silently for more than 20 seconds before responding to questions. And after his successful primary earlier in 2025, Mamdani contacted every business and cultural leader in the city he could get hold of to hear about why they opposed him.

The viral campaign videos that made his name also saw him walking the streets of New York, asking voters questions and listening to their answers at length without interruption. Mamdani may be a radical, but he really listens.

His victory in the New York mayoral election is the moral repudiation of an establishment that mistook political access for virtue and money for merit. Against a torrent of billionaire donations, media scepticism, Islamophobia and the hostility of his own party’s leadership, Mamdani prevailed.

His win is a signal that the old arithmetic of wealth and influence no longer guarantees power.

His stunning grassroots campaign, on what was characterized as a radical left-wing platform, led the message of affordability and upending a political class dominated by wealthy donors.

How did a figure on the far left of American politics, who is also a Muslim and staunch critic of Israel, win in a city that is full of millionaires and home to a sizeable Jewish population?

His presence on social media raised his profile and attracted voters, posting slick videos on TikTok and Instagram throughout his campaign. As did the focus of his campaign on making life more affordable for New Yorkers.

The political left in the US and beyond as well as in India can learn many lessons from Mamdani’s victory – that disciplined, humane, and rooted politics can eventually defeat dehumanizing and divisive narratives by combining a lively digital campaign with a strong focus on the cost of living.

It also suggests that candidates perceived as being radical are more likely to succeed in elections when they are visibly willing to listen to and deliberate with voters from all sorts of backgrounds.

Can India’s political opposition follow this message from New York? In electing Mamdani, New Yorkers reclaimed their democracy from those who sold it. They reminded the nation that principle can still defeat power, that conscience can still outvote capital and that a party that serves Wall Street and fears truth cannot pretend to speak for the people.

Mamdani’s campaign offered a counter example: a politics built around what unites working people rather than what divides them. While, in India, political debates are often framed in terms of faith and identity.

What distinguished Mamdani was not only the content of his programme, but the candor with which he stated its premise: Government should serve those who labour, not those who lobby. He proclaimed that the city belonged to its citizens, not to developers, bankers and donors.

Mamdani’s victory is the culmination of a generational revolt. The young and progressives have grown weary of being told that the system, though imperfect, must be obeyed. They have seen their futures mortgaged to student debt, their wages devoured by rent and their ideals dismissed by politicians who confuse moral compromise with wisdom.

They are no longer content with symbolic liberalism or the empty vocabulary of shared values. They want a politics that speaks the truth and acts upon it. In their defiance lies the beginning of renewal.

India’s political Opposition, on the other hand, has long been fragmented and is more often than not reactive. First, speak to lived, everyday hardship. Indian opposition leaders must ground their politics in real, daily struggles — for housing, health and jobs.

Although the Constitutional vision is primary, it is abstract and doesn’t speak directly to the hearts of the populace.

All history testifies that weakness in the face of the class enemy only invites aggression. Only a strategy of bold, unapologetic class struggle—relying solely on the strength of the working class—can succeed. same.

But Indian voters such as farmers, day-laborers, rickshaw-pullers, street hawkers, vendors, small shop owners, factory workers, and domestic help would know little about the ruling party’s agenda and their compromised governance.

With so little public knowledge, and poverty Indian voters get fooled by the freebies from the ruling party at election time. Would such freebies give these citizens an authentic view of the ruling party’s governance, accountability and agenda?

Mamdani was also supported by “people’s power,” which is the only power democracy is supposed to recognize. If the official election machinery is uninfluenced, voters can defeat all other powers in a democracy.

But the crux of it was that he sensed the public pulse and articulated it effectively, so that the voters developed trust in him. All of this would have amounted to nothing if voters did not have the courage, determination, and energy to express their views by casting their votes in record numbers.

Elections in India, may not be similar to Mamdani’s in terms of upsetting the ruling class, but it is a similar moment for India in terms of returning to democracy.

Once again, it is hoped India is at the doorstep of a lively parliament where government and ruling party can be held accountable, where bureaucracy will once again not be the “masters” but the “public servants,” as they were recruited to be.

Police will enforce the law and not be “above the law” unlike currently, when they have enjoyed perpetual impunity regardless of what they did. In my view, one word encompasses everything that we expect and hope from future elections: establishing accountability.

Will Indian voters take that chance? The challenge is not only to appeal to them but to empower them, to give them the confidence that they matter.

Mamdani explained the strategy of his campaign: while politicians usually go to voters, telling them about their plans and how implementing them would benefit the public, he, instead, went and asked what they wanted.

“All said they wanted New York City to become affordable for them. So, we built our campaign around how to bring down the cost of living in the city,” said Mamdani. In India’s case, do their politicians ever ask voters what they need or want? Will they do so this time?

Has there been any attempt by political parties to conduct a survey to find out what their people want? I doubt it.

India’s ruling and the main opposition spend so much time, energy and resources to bring various political parties together, to build political consensus on fundamental issues.

While that was good indeed, no effort is made to gauge the voters’ views and expectations. Voters are never at the core of India’s election process.

India’s politicians must give the voters their due respect and offer them a chance to have their wishes fulfilled. Election must be held in an ethical, uninfluenced, free and fair manner, which is the most important task before the whole nation.

Bring them to the centre of chalking out the future of India. Let the culture of politicians imposing their own wishes on voters’ end.