Why Mumbai Cannot Have Its Mamdani Moment

By: Subrat Ratho

Mumbai: Even those instinctively suspicious of anyone who openly subscribes to socialism would have to concede that Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York’s mayoral election is historic on multiple counts. It represents not merely the triumph of a particular ideology, but of a certain kind of politics: articulate, values-driven, rooted in lived urban anxieties, and unafraid to name structural problems. His speeches are refreshingly direct, even for the politically cynical who believe that democratic politics is now permanently broken and reduced to spectacle or technocratic management.

That contrast throws into sharp relief the striking lack of excitement among most Mumbaikars about the forthcoming elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

This indifference persists despite the fact that the elections follow a prolonged and unusual interregnum during which India’s financial capital had no elected corporators at all. For some years biw , Mumbai has been governed by IAS officers appointed by – and effectively accountable to – the Maharashtra state government, ‘unencumbered’ by an elected body. In a city that prides itself on civic consciousness, this extended absence of grassroots democratic representation has generated remarkably little public agitation.

The obvious question, therefore, is whether the election of 227 corporators, followed by the choice of a mayor from among them, will make a meaningful difference to the lives of ordinary Mumbaikars – or whether these elections matter mainly to political parties, contractors, and those with an academic interest in the city’s endlessly fascinating but often frustrating politics.

There is no shortage of political intrigue. The split in the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde, the subsequent coming together – at least electorally – of the long-estranged Thackeray cousins, and the BJP’s strategic calculations all add drama. There is also curiosity about the BJP’s role under Devendra Fadnavis, a Chief Minister who has taken an unusually sustained personal interest in Mumbai’s infrastructure and housing projects, with visible, if uneven, results. Metro lines, coastal roads, redevelopment schemes, and transport corridors increasingly bear the imprint of a more hands-on state leadership.

Yet this very fact points to the core reason why Mumbai cannot have its own “Mamdani moment”.

The uncomfortable truth – often poorly understood even by politically aware citizens- is that the Mayor of Mumbai does not run the city. The Mayor’s role is largely ceremonial: presiding over meetings of the General Body of corporators, representing the city at public functions, and acting as a symbolic first citizen. Executive authority does not reside in that office.

It lies with the Municipal Commissioner.

The Municipal Commissioner (MC), an IAS officer, is the chief executive of the BMC. He controls the municipal bureaucracy, oversees implementation, sanctions expenditure, and directs policy execution. While the Commissioner and his officers are expected to be responsive to elected corporators, for all practical purposes – and without getting lost in legal detail – the MC is ultimately accountable to the Chief Minister of the state. In a city where the municipal budget runs into tens of thousands of crores and exceeds that of several Indian states, this distinction is not merely procedural; it is decisive.

Unsurprisingly, the real prizes in BMC politics are not the Mayor’s chair but those of the Standing Committee and the Improvements Committee, in that order. These bodies control finances, contracts, approvals, and developmental priorities. They are the nerve centres where political power intersects with urban resources. The individuals who chair them are rarely widely known, but they serve as crucial intermediaries between party leaderships and what has long been described – although a bit hyperbolically – as the “richest municipal body in Asia”.

This institutional reality makes it difficult for Mumbai to replicate the kind of mayor-centric, agenda-driven politics that Mamdani represents in New York. There, the mayor is unmistakably the city’s chief executive – directly elected and visibly accountable. In Mumbai, executive authority is structurally insulated from electoral politics, resting instead with a professional bureaucracy under state control.

None of this is to suggest that the BMC elections are inconsequential or merely contests between pockets of influence driven by primordial loyalties, emotive issues, shifting alliances, betrayals, patronage networks, and – inevitably – the flow of money.

Substantive issues are very much at stake. Despite massive expenditure, Mumbai continues to struggle with infrastructure deficits: inequities in water supply between the city and its suburbs, ageing sewerage systems, solid waste management challenges, and chronic monsoon-related flooding. Environmental pressures – from mangrove destruction to deteriorating air quality – are intensifying in a city squeezed between the sea and speculative real estate.

Equally pressing are questions of everyday urban dignity: affordable and reliable public transport, walkable footpaths, accessible parks, parking chaos, and the quality of civic spaces. For the underprivileged, the stakes are higher still – the capacity and quality of municipal hospitals, the condition of BMC-run schools, wages and security for domestic and informal workers, access to affordable housing, and the burden of property taxes in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

Mumbai is an economically dynamic metropolis, but also a brutally expensive one. That contradiction defines civic life here.

What Mumbai lacks, however, is not issues, public engagement, or capable leadership, but an institutional arrangement that clearly links democratic choice with executive authority. Despite cities accounting for over a third of India’s population and an even larger share of its economic output, urban local bodies remain structurally dependent on state governments for finances, staffing, and decision-making. When substantive control over budgets, personnel, and implementation rests largely with a state-appointed bureaucracy, municipal elections are inevitably constrained in what they can promise or deliver. Voters appear to recognise this, which helps explain the muted public response even when the scale of the city’s challenges is widely acknowledged.

If Mumbai is ever to experience its own version of a Mamdani moment, it is likely to emerge not from personality or ideology alone, but from a gradual rethinking of urban governance. More than three decades after the 74th Constitutional Amendment sought to strengthen urban local self-government, the balance between elected representation and executive authority remains unsettled. Strengthening the role of elected representatives, improving clarity of accountability, and better aligning those who are elected with those who exercise executive power would make civic politics more meaningful to citizens. Until then, Mumbai’s municipal elections will remain important and consequential, but their capacity to inspire broad-based civic enthusiasm is likely to remain limited.

Subrat Ratho is a former Indian Administrative Service officer (1986 batch, Maharashtra cadre) with over 37 years of experience in public administration and public policy, and in advisory roles in the private sector.