It’s hardly surprising that the November election of Indian-origin Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the youthful (34) Mayor of New York City (NYC), has prompted media headlines around the world. Improbably, Uganda-born immigrant Mamdani is now the elected mayor of America’s most populous, iconic and wealthiest metropolis.

Consequently, this self-confessed socialist is CEO of staunchly capitalist America’s, if not the world’s, commercial nerve centre by virtue of it hosting the business and banking hub of Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s most heavily capitalized stock market. NYC’s annual budget of $1.19 trillion is larger than of Indonesia, Philippines and Argentina and contributes 4.3 percent of America’s annual GDP ($30 trillion). NYC (pop. 8.5 million)has 350,000 employees on its payroll.

Mamdani’s electoral victory comes at a moment when President Donald Trump — ignorant of the reality that America’s economic and military strength was built by the unpaid labour of forcibly trafficked black Africans and immigrants from Europe and around the world —  has turned the white majority against the black population and migrants by legislating laws to deport undocumented migrants and prevent further immigration.

Yet Mamdani has made no secret of his socialist development agenda for New York, a “city of immigrants, built by immigrants”. Free public transport for citizens, rents freeze, construction of 200,000 affordable homes, municipal-run grocery stores, free childcare services, and raising the minimum wage. To fund these welfare measures, he intends to steeply raise local taxes payable by industry and super-rich property owners. In India, such statements of intent are routine, but in the US, especially in the country’s epicentre of freewheeling capitalism, this is unprecedented heresy.

Yet even as Mamdani’s confrontation with America’s capitalist establishment is being played out, there are several lessons that right-thinking citizens in India can draw from this unfolding American drama. First, our crumbling, road-traffic-choked cities urgently need to be governed by empowered municipal corporations headed by directly elected Mayors as envisaged by the 74th Constitution Amendment Act, 1993. This overdue constitutional amendment hasn’t received traction because selfish state governments refuse to devolve power to municipal corporations. As proposed often on this very page, property taxes should accrue to municipal corporations and devolve upon ward committees comprising property owners. Only this formula can save India’s rapidly deteriorating cities from ruin.

Mamdani’s proposals are not unreasonable bearing in mind that through the grit, enterprise and determination of immigrant entrepreneurs, the US and NYC, its commercial capital, are the world’s wealthiest country and metropolis. Now that a large — indeed gargantuan — cake has been baked, it’s time to distribute it generously. Unfortunately, in post-independence India, a delusional socialist establishment attempted to distribute wealth before creating it. Hence the pathetic also-ran status in the international development race of this high-potential nation.