Lal Salaam, but from a safe distance

India has acquired a remarkable export industry: producing politicians whose politics might have made them rather less exportable had their parents and they stayed back in India. With Nithya Raman and Zohran Mamdani as NYC and LA mayors - joining the ranks of Mumbai's Ritu Tawde and Delhi's Pravesh Wahi - RIs (resident Indians) are bursting with pride that two 'of their own' are bosses of America's two largest cities. (London's mayor Sadiq Khan, of Pakistani parentage, and Lucknowi grandparentage, receives a more complicated, 'hush Brown' acknowledgement.)

But beneath the 'Jiyo beta!' lurks a silent question. Would Mamdani and Raman, both dimagi aur dili socialists, have flourished had their progenitors not moved to America? More intriguingly, would they have become socialists at all? America's achievement is to have created an ecosystem where socialism can be a fashionable, electable response to capitalism's excesses. India, which once made socialism a constitutional accessory, isn't capitalist enough to make for lassi socialism, never mind the champagne variety. Mamdani campaigning in Mumbai on rent controls and redistribution may have found himself wanting in the patriotism department. Raman, with her Harvard-MIT credentials, may have found fixing drains to be politically less rewarding than accompanying ministers to inaugurate them. But with NYC and LA in 'our' belt, can Casterbridge be far behind?