POLITICS
The Global Grammar of Populism

The rhetoric of renewal and the promise of change

At first glance, regional and global politics appear to move on separate tracks. Yet, while reading the Battle for New York, I find recurring patterns — the rhetoric of renewal and the promise of change that surface whenever political fatigue begins to set in.

Zohran Mamdani in New York and Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar operate in vastly different worlds. One speaks from a grassroots, activist tradition; the other from a dynastic — one long out of power. Yet both draw energy from a familiar source — the voter’s quiet appetite for something different, however vaguely defined.

Their promises may not rest on firm arithmetic, but they trade in conviction and hope. Should both contests lead to comparable outcomes, it would suggest that the impulse for renewal, not ideology or geography, remains the most enduring constant of democratic politics. ∎