Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral win is historic, but his free bus ride pledge resembles the Kejriwal Model. AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal wooed voters with free bus rides and other freebies in 2019. Mamdani’s socialist schemes, which hint at Indian-style populism, come in NYC, the heart of capitalist America.
Zohran Mamdani has won the New York City mayoral polls. It was a battle well fought against many odds, with nearly every political weapon aimed at the first Muslim, immigrant candidate of the world’s most iconic city. But what stands out even more is how Mamdani, a democratic socialist, appears to have taken a version of the Kejriwal Model from Delhi to New York. Ahead of the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, then Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal announced free metro and bus rides for women in the national capital.
In a similar move, though worlds apart, Mamdani promised, along with other doles, to make city buses free in New York City. The free public bus rides seemingly resemble the women-centric welfare policies of Kejriwal and the AAP. The comparison might seem like a stretch to many, but the parallels of the two leaders in their approach to building a welfare-oriented society are more substantial than they first appear.
Mamdani’s main proposal is to eliminate fares on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) bus network. The plan would reportedly cost $1.2 billion per year and increase ridership by 20-30%, according to Riders Alliance, a New York-based non-profit organisation. These projections are derived from the fare-free bus experiments conducted by the MTA between 2020-2022, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mamdani’s free-bus plan would reportedly be funded by a 2% tax he plans to levy on incomes of over $1 million and reductions in corporate subsidies.
Mamdani’s proposal mirrors AAP’s ‘Pink Ticket’ scheme, which has provided free bus travel for women in Delhi since 2019. The Delhi scheme was funded by the state budget.
That initiative in Delhi led to a 25% surge in bus ridership, and played a significant role in AAP sweeping the 2020 Assembly election.
Before Mamdani took the Kejriwal Model to the US, it found wide political takers across India.
HOW KEJRIWAL AND MAMDANI MADE FREE RIDES POPULIST TOOL
Kejriwal didn’t invent free transit. Europe has been doing it for years. But the difference is that these are all socialist economies.
Luxembourg has nationwide free rides on buses, trams, and trains. Malta also has free local buses. France’s Dunkirk city eliminated fares on its urban network in 2018, and Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn, has given free rides to residents since 2013.
In Eastern Europe, Serbia’s capital city, Belgrade, started fare-free buses in October 2024 to increase ridership by 10%.
There, the initiative was aimed at curbing pollution, boosting public transport usage, and enhancing mobility — all while reinforcing the government’s commitment to public welfare.
But Kejriwal made it a political tool and targeted women to address mobility gaps, which increased the ridership by 10%.
Kejriwal said in a 2020 interview: “Women needed to get to work without fear or fare.” The programme in Delhi recorded over 100 million free trips by 2023 and led to similar initiatives in other Indian states, such as subsidies for women in Tamil Nadu and student passes in Punjab.
Karnataka also started providing free bus rides for women in 2023 through its Shakti scheme, which allows all female and transgender residents to travel for free on state-run buses.
And now, Mamdani has seemingly applied the same approach, but in the US, which has never seen the concept of “freebies” ever before.
In fact, Mamdani’s plan to introduce free bus rides comes in a city often seen as the epitome of capitalist ambition, yet also known for its liberal, left-leaning crowd.
One in five New Yorkers have admitted they struggled to pay for subway and bus fares in 2023, according to a report by Community Service Society of New York, an anti-poverty group, reported the New York Times. This makes Mamdani’s free bus rides promise important, especially for residents of neighbourhoods with limited access to trains.
