At first glance, Imran Khan and Zohran Mamdani occupy vastly different political landscapes: one led a nuclear‐armed nation of 240 million, the other seeks to govern America’s largest city. Yet both share a strikingly similar narrative: reshaping entrenched systems through redistributive policies, social welfare, and progressive taxation—all rooted in a vision of a welfare state that prioritizes vulnerable populations.
- Blueprints of a Welfare State
Imran Khan’s hallmark initiative, the Ehsaas Programme, launched in 2019, aimed to alleviate poverty through cash transfers, scholarships, and digitized welfare—with coverage extending to over 100 million low-income Pakistanis. Subprograms included emergency cash disbursals during COVID-19, interest-free loans, and a women-focused stipend system through Kafaalat. Complementing this was the Sehat Sahulat Program, offering social health insurance to more than 43 million families, enabling access to major medical procedures like cardiac surgery and cancer treatment.
Khan also launched the Ehsaas Apna Ghar program, offering interest-free loans for home construction and renovation, and set up hundreds of Panagahs—shelter homes providing food and temporary lodging to daily wage workers and the homeless. His urban vision focused on vertical housing development to preserve green spaces while combating sprawl.
Echoing such ambition on a municipal scale, Zohran Mamdani advocates for expansive state-led social services: free buses, universal pre‑K childcare, rent freezes, city-run grocery stores, and investments in community health—funded by taxing the rich. Both imagine government as a tool of empowerment—a bulwark for the poor and underserved.
- Redistributive Funding Models
Khan financed his welfare agenda through a blend of austerity, progressive taxation, and IMF-backed reforms. He cut government waste, auctioned luxury assets, and expanded the tax net. His administration emphasized e-governance and tax compliance to redirect resources toward health and poverty alleviation.
Similarly, Mamdani’s plan envisions raising corporate taxes to 11.5% and introducing a 2% millionaire surcharge, generating $9–10 billion annually for New York City. Both believe that societal resilience depends on the wealthy paying more and public resources being equitably distributed.
- Affordable Living as Core Platform
For Khan, the Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme aimed to build millions of affordable homes. His strategy advocated vertical urban development and integrated green urban planning. He also facilitated affordable housing loans and promoted shelter access through Panagahs.
Mamdani’s housing platform centers on a citywide rent freeze, construction of 200,000 affordable homes in ten years, upzoning around transit hubs, and development of social housing and tenant protections. Both leaders seek to intervene in housing markets to reinforce public provision and affordability.
- Human Capital
Khan invested in universal health insurance, the Single National Curriculum for public education, youth centers, digital literacy programs, and skills development. The Ehsaas Undergraduate Scholarships helped tens of thousands access higher education, while the health card initiative alone reached over 43 million families.
Mamdani similarly emphasizes universal childcare, free public bus services, public grocery access, and trans healthcare funding—pledging $65 million to gender-affirming care. Both leaders view investment in human capital not as a privilege, but as a right that underpins national equity.
- Environmental & Urban Reform
Khan’s green agenda included the Billion Tree Tsunami, hydroelectric development in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and green urban planning efforts aligned with sustainable city growth. His focus on vertical housing and green belts demonstrated a convergence of environmental and welfare thinking.
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Mamdani proposes Green Schools with solar roofs and green spaces, bans on gas appliances, congestion pricing, and the creation of climate-resilient infrastructure called “resilience hubs.” Both treat climate justice as inseparable from economic and racial justice.
- Anti-Corruption, Community & Accountability
Imran Khan’s rise rested on anti-corruption rhetoric, institutional reform, and digital transparency—from asset declarations to e-governance platforms.
Mamdani brands himself as free from the establishment machine, using grassroots organizing, hunger strikes, multilingual outreach, and viral videos to deliver participatory and accountable governance.
Where Vision Meets Limits
Yet each faces evident challenges. Khan’s reforms collided with entrenched bureaucracy, macroeconomic instability, and dependence on IMF loans. Mamdani faces backlash from business leaders, police unions, and centrists wary of his framing and redistribution plans.
Both reveal a common dilemma: how to realize ambitious welfare programs within systems constrained by political resistance, economic orthodoxy, and uneven support. Khan required international finance and macroeconomic balance; Mamdani needs Albany’s cooperation, federal alignment, and public trust.
Media Treatment and Identity Politics
What binds Imran Khan and Zohran Mamdani more than policy is their outsider status. Khan came from cricket and philanthropy. Mamdani, the son of Ugandan-Indian Muslim immigrants, emerged from Queens’ grassroots organizing. Neither came from legacy parties—they rose through dissent, not dynasties.
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Yet their outsider status has invited a different kind of scrutiny, particularly from legacy media and entrenched elites. For Khan, Western media often reduced his leadership to a populist-religious binary, overlooking complex governance amid civil-military friction and IMF pressures.
At times, coverage reduced him to a stereotype: a religious nationalist, a military puppet, or a demagogue—obscuring his genuine investment in health access, poverty alleviation, and environmental reform. More revealing, though, was how he was selectively cornered on global Muslim identity—repeatedly pressed by international outlets to condemn China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. While other heads of state escaped such moral litmus tests, Khan—a Muslim leader from the Global South—was expected to navigate complex diplomacy while becoming a spokesperson for an issue tied as much to Western anxieties about China as to human rights.
Mamdani, too, has been relentlessly targeted on identity grounds. In the wake of his Democratic primary win, a wave of online Islamophobia surged: over 6,700 hate posts, 419 million+ impressions, and calls from U.S. lawmakers like Andy Ogles and Randy Fine for DOJ investigations and citizenship revocation. Fox News and Rudy Giuliani accused him of “dual loyalties.” Tech investor Shaun Maguire labeled him an “Islamist,” sparking both backlash and tech-industry defenses.
Even mainstream media, including the New York Times, have fixated on Mamdani’s Muslim identity rather than his transit or housing plans—portraying him as a cultural threat in a majority-Jewish city. His solidarity with Palestinians is weaponized to paint him as un-American, despite deep local roots and a lifelong New York identity.
This double standard—where Muslim identity becomes a litmus test for loyalty—reveals cultural gatekeeping beyond the ballot box. Both Khan and Mamdani face attacks not just on governance, but on belonging.
They’re not only asked to defend their ideas, but to prove they deserve to lead.
The Larger Discomfort
What unsettles much of the Western legacy media and policy establishment is not the image of the “Muslim in a turban”—easily othered as fundamentalist—but the emergence of modern, secular, educated Muslim leaders who advocate justice, democracy, and redistribution in fluent English, armed with elite degrees or organizing credentials. Figures like Khan and Mamdani defy the binaries of the West’s making. They present social welfare and moral clarity not as borrowed liberalism, but as values deeply rooted in their own faith and civic traditions. They represent not a threat to democracy—but its reinvigoration.
When Muslims speak the language of equity and freedom on their own terms, the challenge to power is not just ideological—it’s existential. They ask not for assimilation, but for recognition. And that, perhaps more than any policy plank, is what the status quo fears most.
In the end, Imran Khan and Zohran Mamdani represent more than policy parallels—they symbolize a global rupture: a generational challenge to inherited power and a reclaiming of politics by those long excluded. As the line between Global South struggles and urban inequality fades, their stories feel less like outliers—and more like portents of a new majority, rising.
The writer is a technology analyst who writes under the pseudonym Patience Quill.