In today’s fast-growing world, politics still revolves around survival and competition for power, where attempts to fulfil every citizen’s overall basic needs are often dismissed as impossible in the face of international economic and political pressure. Zohran Mamdani’s politics challenge this assumption by demonstrating what governance can actually look like when human rights are just as much prioritized as economic growth in practice, rather than being sacrificed for it.
In our day to day life, we might have often found a certain sentiment about politics and politicians in movies, stand-up comedy, talk shows and other forms of media, which is “politicians cannot be politicians if they do not master the skill of lying”. Over time, many people have been led to believe that politics cannot truly care for every person under its governance. However, Zohran Mamdani’s genuine commitment to fulfil his promises made to the New York citizens, do compel us to reassess this assumption about politics.
Zohran Mamdani is New York’s city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor and has gained widespread recognition across generations, especially among young people, because of his empathetic understanding of the hardships that the ordinary citizens in New York face in their daily lives, and to make New York city affordable again. He personally interacted with the citizens to understand the length of their hardships in especially affording houses and daily necessities. After being elected, he immediately started his campaigns towards the goal of making the New York city better to live in, while simultaneously keeping the citizens notified about the progress through daily check-ins using social medial platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky.
He quickly reversed several policies introduced by former mayor Eric Adams, including restrictions related to Israel divestment and an expanded definition of anti-Semitism, while also requiring city agencies to appoint “chief saving officers” to help reduce the city’s budget deficit. Mamdani also re-established the city’s Office to Protect Tenants and signed directives to fast-track affordable housing across the five boroughs. Furthermore, he secured state funding to gradually expand free preschool and advanced plans for city-run grocery stores, while also scaling back some major campaign promises, including unilateral control over public schools and rent freezes, due to legal and financial limitations. However, his human rights-based ideology did not allow his broader vision to disappear. Through collaboration with the state, Mamdani secured a historic $1.2 billion investment to establish free childcare for 2-years-old and expand 3-K capacity. His re-establishment of Mayor’s Office led his administration to successfully recover $34 million in repairs, settlements, and judgements on behalf of the renters. Additionally, his administration recovered over $9 million for workers and small businesses from abusive employers and corporate violators, including unpaid Amazon idling fines. At the same time, he closed an inherited $12 billion budget deficit to pass a balanced city budget while successfully negotiating a wealth tax on luxury second homes.
Whether all of his policies succeed or not, Mamdani represents an important political idea, which is, democracy should not only protect economic system and desires for profit but also the people living within the system itself. Power is important for sure, but humanity and human welfare based on protecting human rights should also be equally important. Power becomes fragile when humanity is neglected because it includes all of us, our families, communities, and societies. For their welfare and everyone else’s, the example of Zohran Mamdani’s humanity based politics should inspire the traditional mainstream politics of profit and political convenience.
The writer is an intern at the Applied Democracy Lab, University of Dhaka
