Nepali Mantra in New York

Thirty-four-year old Zohran Mamdani just got elected mayor of New York City, USA, on the back of slogans such as promising to give New Yorkers free food handouts. But little do people know that the main reason for his victory was that he drew inspiration from the socialists of Nepal!

Nepal's communist parties have been teaching socialism to the world for years, in fact, the past three decades. Their old mantra is to distribute everything to everyone for free. That practice began in Nepal, with leaders and their families first receiving free facilities. That pilot project was then spread across the country as a 'Project of Pride', which is now spreading around the world.

“The leaders get almost everything for free, but what about the people?” you just might ask. The people, too, get many things free of cost, for example – air! You also get the prescription cards for free at Nepali hospitals. It is written in the constitution itself that education up to the secondary level is free. Only books, uniforms and results are charged!

The slogan of 'one house, one job' is still prevalent and 'zero tolerance for corruption' continues as an eternal policy even today. Generation Z launched their recent anti-corruption movement without even knowing that this policy already existed!

Even if someone is sanctified and glorified as a god for making Nepal free from load-shedding, the electricity still goes blink-blink from time to time. But while you may not always get electricity, “electric water” – the local slang for booze  - is available everywhere, and it’s cheaper than gas! You might not find Paracetamol, but you can go to heaven for free. Nepal has offered the world an important lesson: ‘Even without lifting a finger, one can sell promises so heavy that no human could possibly carry them.’

It is now beyond doubt that Mamdani has taken inspiration from the path shown by Nepal. No wonder that the moment he won the election, he began eating momo, the dish that is on its way to becoming our first national delicacy, after already being the second, and started claiming New York ‘ma ma’, meaning ‘mine’ in Sanskrit. This proves that he has learned a lot from Nepal. It won’t be long before Mamdani comes to Nepal to take a short course on ‘How to make a state fail in 10 hours’. And if he does come, we should make him change his name from Mamdani to Momodani!

Inspired by Nepali socialists, Mamdani has made a divine promise to New Yorkers to provide free public transportation, huge discounts on housing rent, free healthcare, food subsidies, and free everything for the poor, and to raise taxes on the rich.

He said, “New York will become an accessible city for everyone.”

This easy way to win the hearts of the people had been demonstrated by the communist parties of Nepal for decades. But when you listen to Mamdani’s promises, you feel like this is a reprint of the manifesto of the communist parties of Nepal. After all, Nepali communists do not have the copyright over falsehoods!

But the good news is that now the world, too, is learning from Nepal – learning how to win the trust of the people without doing any actual work. After all, if Nepal can learn from others, why can’t others learn from Nepal? If Nepal has achieved political success simply by promising pledges, why should anyone object when America promises free transportation?

Nepal can teach the world many more things - such as how to bring back load-shedding even when there is electricity, how to make an aircraft circle the airport 32 times before landing, how to export development reports instead of development itself, how to drive the youth abroad and how to develop a ‘zero cost, 100% impact’ economy – in other words, how to run a country straight into exhaustion!

Well, now it remains to be seen whether Mamdani will implement his promises or not. If he really does, he will flop. But, on the other hand, if he adds assurances to assurances like the Nepali leaders, he will succeed. Then we can proudly say, “See? Didn’t the mantra taught by Nepal work?”

If Mamdani’s policy takes hold, a new partnership could emerge between Nepal and the US - ‘Nepal-America Dream Limited’. And, branches could open in both countries - Dream Bank, Assurance ATM, and Trust Insurance Corporation, etc.

But the danger is that if New York implements into its policy what Nepal has been promoting for 30 years, our original intellectual property rights will be violated and Nepal could be in trouble. Our politicians have duped the people only by doing the talk, if those in New York actually walk the talk, it would be intellectual injustice. So let's hope that Mamdani does not walk the talk. Because that is our original tradition.

In fact, Mamdani could learn many more things from Nepal. For example: the economics of speeches, project management based on promises, the skill of smiling at people only during elections, the art of singing hymns even on an empty stomach, the method of investigating an investigation committee, and the cheap craft of character assassination. In this way, the art of running a country without doing any work has become Nepal’s chief export — something that might be entirely new for Mamdani.

In any case, the art of distributing assurances, Nepal's original asset, has now reached New York. This is a matter of happiness and pride. This mantra propounded by Nepal is spreading all over the world. Modi used to call India Vishwaguru.  But after Mamdani  took his cue from Nepali leaders, Nepal is now in line to become Vishwaguru. The world is learning from us. If there is anything more, we will teach that too.

Now our national policy could be something like this: whoever incurs losses should be given national honor; whoever earns profits through honest business should be made a national embarrassment. And anyone who creates jobs — we should immediately launch an investigation against them. If the government fails to act, let the people do it instead: set fires, vandalize properties, and destroy buildings. Because we don’t aspire to become prosperous; we aspire to suffer equally. We want equality. We want socialism. And that means absolute sameness. Let us all be equal — equally unemployed, equally poor, equally hopeless.

Now the slogan of the state should be – let’s not earn, but receive  grants. Rejoice in distribution, not creation. Engage in emotional equality, not economic development. It’s not that we only import – from Moscow  to Beijing; now the era of exports from Nepal, too, has begun.  Even though the trade deficit in goods has increased, Nepal is reaping  huge profits from the trade of ideas. Now, not Kathmandu, but New York is becoming the new capital of socialism. Mamdani, importing ideas from Nepal, declared, “We will make the poor happy by taxing the rich. Then everyone will be equal. One pays the tax, the other applauds.”

We always only curse communists, but now our same communism-fusion-confusion is being exported to the world. Nepal planted the seed  of free-ism-laden socialism, and Mamdani watered it in America. Now the world will nurture the blooming plant, and we will be able to say with pride, “See? The global franchise of socialism actually belongs to Nepal.”

Mamdani is the first international student of Vishwaguru Nepal. Heartiest congratulations to Mamdani for that!

(This article was originally published in December 2025 issue of New Business Age magazine.)