U.S. President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speak to reporters during a press conference following their meeting at Gracie Mansion in New York City, U.S., on September 21, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File photo: Pool via Reuters.

“A six-year-old child is too young to slice an onion, to fry an egg or to use a stove safely. But once that child becomes 16, that knowledge becomes something they are mature enough to learn,” stressed New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani, while announcing a one-year moratorium on AI tools for students.

In what has been described as one of “the most expansive student-facing AI policies in the country”, the Mayor and Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels on September 2 imposed a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for pupils up to eighth grade for the 2026–27 academic year.

Here’s what you need to know about the moratorium, why NYC introduced it, and why the move could set a global precedent.

This move will affect nearly 6,00,000 public school students across the United States’ largest school district. Companion chatbots will be prohibited across all grades, while the AI components of more than 38 previously approved programmes that fail to meet the new standards will be disabled or discontinued.

However, not all AI has been banned. Teachers can continue to use approved tools for planning and administrative work. Assistive technologies required by students with disabilities, as well as certain AI tools used in career-readiness programmes, remain permitted where necessary and under the policy’s safeguards.

Five limited AI pilots will also operate throughout the year for high school classrooms. These select tools are Quill (15 minutes per week) for English language arts; Edia (20 minutes per week) for mathematics; Brisk Teaching (10 to 20 minutes once or twice weekly) for teacher-created activities; Playlab (two assignments per marking period; 45 minutes per week) for assignment-specific applications; and Intel AI-Ready Schools (one period per week) to assist students in identifying community issues and developing solutions through term-long projects.

Every high school student will complete two 45-minute modules per year aimed at developing critical thinking around AI use, including its risks, limitations, and scope. Alongside AI restrictions, tighter individual screen-time limits have also been introduced. Children from 2-K through to second grade will have no routine screen time. For those in grades three to five, NYC Public Schools recommends no more than 30 minutes a day of individual screen use; for grades six to eight, the recommendation is 45 minutes. These restrictions do not prohibit teacher-led use of computers, tablets, or interactive whiteboards during lessons.

Throughout the academic year, a panel comprising students, educators, parents, elected officials, union partners, and field experts will assess the impact of the moratorium and pilots, delivering a report with policy recommendations in April 2027.

“Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow,” Mr. Mamdani said. “They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators, and wrestle with tough problems on their own.” Mr. Samuels also made a similar argument. Learning, he said, involves getting something wrong, trying again and eventually getting it right. That struggle is not an inconvenience that technology should eliminate; it is part of the learning process.

This move arrives amidst growing concern over screen time harming youth mental health. Studies have linked excessive scrolling, social media exposure and reliance on AI in children to lower critical thinking abilities, shorter attention spans, anxiety, and depression. While evidence connecting AI chatbots to suicide risk remains limited, several cases have prompted lawsuits alleging that interactions with chatbots contributed to young people’s deaths. Mr. Mamdani’s decision follows OpenAI’s launch of a teenage version of ChatGPT on August 18 featuring parental controls and content restrictions regarding self-harm and suicide. On August 26, Meta similarly announced stricter time limits, night-time blocking, and muted notifications during school hours for teenage accounts on Instagram and Facebook.

“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable but necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mr. Mamdani added.

Research supports a cautious stance. A 2026 CEPR discussion paper by researchers at Stockholm University and the University of Hong Kong examined more than 26,000 students in China over 30 months. They found that access to generative AI increased homework scores by 18% and reduced completion time by 30%. However, after roughly six months, the same students’ closed-book examination scores had fallen by 20%. A broader review by the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Universal Education, analysing over 400 studies and interviews with 500 educators and pupils across 50 countries, concluded that the potential harms of generative AI in primary and secondary education currently outweigh the benefits—though tailored applications with proper safeguards can enrich learning.

How are other parts of the world dealing with a similar dilemma? The United Arab Emirates is moving towards more structured AI education, rather than a moratorium. It has announced an AI curriculum across public and private schools covering areas such as data, algorithms, applications, risks and ethical use. It also plans to train about 22,000 educators in using AI for teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis and lesson planning.

Norway has adopted a more cautious approach. Its education authorities have recommended that pupils in grades one to seven should not be given access to generative AI, while students in eight to 10 should be introduced to it gradually.

Australia has taken another route: a national framework for responsible and ethical use of generative AI in schools, rather than a blanket prohibition. The European Union, meanwhile, has sought to regulate high-risk uses of AI. Under the EU AI Act, certain systems used in education — including those involved in evaluating learning outcomes or determining access to education — can fall into the high-risk category. The legislation does not amount to a general ban on generative AI in schools.

Poland is going further in the opposite direction, investing almost 1.9 billion zloty to equip 12,000 schools with AI laboratory sets as part of its broader digital education push.

And where does India stand? India is closer to the integration camp. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 identifies artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies as important to India’s changing educational and employment landscape, and calls for contemporary subjects such as AI to be introduced at appropriate stages, alongside greater emphasis on computational thinking.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) introduced Artificial Intelligence as an optional sixth subject in Class IX from the 2019-20 academic session. More recently, for 2026-27, CBSE launched a dedicated Computational Thinking and Artificial Intelligence curriculum for Classes III to VIII, with AI and allied-subject curricula for Classes IX to XII also finalised. The curriculum emphasises logical reasoning, pattern recognition, algorithm design, data literacy and responsible and ethical AI use.

[Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on the State’s health helpline 104, Tele-MANAS 14416 and SNEHA’s suicide prevention helpline – 044 24640050 or from any of the numbers in this link]

Published – September 05, 2026 01:02 pm IST

People gather as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hold a press conference at the scene of an officer-involved shooting, in Times Square, New York City, U.S. August 31, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat receives a warm welcome on his arrival in New York on August 25, 2026.
| Photo Credit: ANI

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: NYC Mayor’s Office via YouTube

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and (right) on the menu at Chatti, New York
| Photo Credit: Michael M. Santiago (Getty Images via AFP) and LAH Studios

In an election cycle where the Democrats won multiple mayoralties and governor positions across the U.S., Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York stood out. Mr. Mamdani’s triumph was singular because of his unabashed “democratic socialism” platform, which defeated well-funded Democratic establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent. His win reflects the growing electoral viability of a political tradition hitherto marginalised in U.S. politics: socialism.

Zohran Mamdani-backed candidates excel in congressional primaries

On the surface, Mr. Mamdani’s key promises — rent freezes, public groceries, universal childcare, fare-free buses, and affordable housing — would seem to be standard welfare-state policies familiar in European political economies or Global South democracies. But Mr. Mamdani has pledged to fundamentally restructure the relationship between New York’s city government and its 8.5 million residents, reflecting an ideological clarity rooted in democratic socialist principles, much different from the largely pragmatic Democratic Party mainstream.

What exactly is ‘democratic socialism’? How does it differ from European social democracy— particularly the Nordic model? And how does it differentiate itself from the ‘revolutionary socialism’ associated with Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin?

Political movement

Mr. Mamdani, like many democratic socialists, holds dual membership — he is both a Democrat and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is not a political party but rather an advocacy platform and membership organisation. The DSA adopted a new programmatic vision at its 2025 National Convention titled ‘Workers Deserve More’. The programme declares its mission to unite workers into a powerful political movement to win the battle for democracy, with the ultimate goal of putting workers in charge of government through a new democratic constitution based on proportional representation that ends the role of money in politics.

This differs fundamentally from European social democracy. The Nordic model seeks to reform capitalism through robust welfare states, progressive taxation and strong labour protections while keeping the capitalist market economy intact. While U.S. leaders like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders identify as “democratic socialist”, their platforms often align more closely with European social democracy. The DSA, however, aims to gradually replace capitalism itself with “social ownership” of major industries. The programme explicitly identifies capitalism as “the cause of violence, unemployment, and a climate crisis that poses an existential threat to life on earth”, arguing that billionaires control and profit from basic human needs like housing, healthcare, and education.

Yet, this doesn’t mean nationalising every enterprise. A democratic socialist economy would feature democratic planning of major investments — infrastructure, energy, telecommunications — alongside market exchange of consumer goods. Large concentrated industries would be publicly owned and managed by worker and consumer representatives, while many consumer-goods industries would operate as cooperatives. The goal is democratic economic participation — “a government by, for, and of the working class”. Democratic socialists also reject Marxism-Leninism’s ‘vanguard party’ revolution, instead using existing democratic processes — elections, legislation, mass mobilisation — to achieve change. This commitment to pluralism and civil liberties distinguishes them from authoritarian regimes that claimed the socialist mantle.

Mr. Sanders emphasised throughout his presidential campaigns that many programmes U.S. citizens now consider essential — social security, the minimum wage, Medicare — were denounced as ‘socialist’ when first proposed. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms faced fierce opposition, and ‘democratic socialists’, in Mr. Sanders’s view, only seek to complete Roosevelt’s unfinished project. His refusal to abandon his democratic socialist identity while running competitive national campaigns legitimised socialism in mainstream discourse — DSA membership surged from 6,500 in 2014 to over 85,000 today, with over 13,000 joining in the eight months following Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.

Mr. Mamdani’s main promises exemplify ‘decommodification’, key to the principles of democratic socialism, which means the removal of essential human needs from private market provisioning and treating them as social rights. His rent freeze treats housing as a right in a city where 68% are renters facing crippling cost burdens. Municipal groceries, universal childcare, fare-free buses, and 200,000 units of permanently affordable housing all transform essential needs from commodities into social rights. These policies follow models already tested in other American cities but represent the most comprehensive decommodification agenda ever proposed for a major U.S. metropolis.

Beyond economics

Democratic socialism extends beyond welfare economics. The DSA’s 2025 programme centres racial justice, noting that “black and brown workers in racially segregated communities bear the brunt of capitalism’s cruelties, suffering especially from poverty wages, discrimination, deportation, and unemployment”. Current priorities include “defeating the far-right, protecting the rights of the working-class, from the U.S. to Palestine, and fighting for democracy”, reflecting an internationalist stance connecting struggles for justice across borders. Environmental sustainability is equally central, combating climate change while rejecting the fossil fuel industry’s “greed and profiteering”.

The DSA was founded in 1982 through a merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement by Michael Harrington, whose 1962 book The Other America helped inspire Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty. Harrington, who served as the DSA’s chair, envisioned a multi-tendency organisation that could unite various progressive constituencies such as trade unionists, civil rights activists, feminists, and anti-war progressives, who were fractured during the Vietnam War.

Unlike European socialists who built labour parties, American progressives confronted what Harrington called the Democratic Party’s “left wing of the possible”. This “realignment strategy” is about building progressive power within the Democratic Party while maintaining independent socialist identity—remains contentious. Critics argue it leads to co-optation; supporters counter that electoral irrelevance serves no one.

The DSA has achieved significant electoral victories, with Congressional wins by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, followed by Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush among others. At the municipal level, democratic socialists have captured city council seats from Seattle to Chicago to Philadelphia.

Yet, Mr. Mamdani’s triumph stands apart. New York City, with a budget of over $100 billion and a population exceeding that of 40 U.S. States, represents one of the most complex and influential examples of American urban governance.

For a democratic socialist to win this prize demonstrates that the movement has transcended niche activism to achieve mainstream electoral viability.

Mr. Mamdani’s victory, for democratic socialist thinkers, validates the theory that substantive reforms and structural transformation require a combination of strong unions, community organisations, and the socialist movement. The prerequisites for success in economic struggles or workplace democracy require organised popular strength and the fact that an estimated 90,000 volunteers mobilised behind Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, suggests that a movement was responsible for catapulting him to power.

Zohran Mamdani’s tenure as New York’s Mayor will now be watched closely to see whether his version of democratic socialism can actually govern, whether “decommodification” can be implemented at scale, whether a city can be run by and for working people and whether the unfinished agenda from the New Deal, as Mr. Sanders put it, can be realised in the U.S.’s largest city.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not attend an annual parade honouring Israel on Sunday (May 31, 2026), breaking with a decades-long political custom because of his support of Palestinian rights.

Though it has gone by different names over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for Mayors, Governors and other political leaders eager to win over the throngs of flag-waving revellers who congregate on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.

Not so for Mr. Mamdani. Two weeks ago the Mayor’s office released a video commemorating the Nakba, an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 7,00,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.

“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference Thursday (May 28, 2026).

But he also promised a robust police presence to make sure it went off “seamlessly and peacefully.”

The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, did attend the parade.

“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she had said Thursday (May 28, 2026) as she stood alongside Mr. Mamdani at police headquarters.

The Mayor’s absence, though long expected, has given fresh fuel to opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mr. Mamdani’s decision to not attend the parade “a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers.”

“Do us a favor, stay home,” he said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”

Mr. Schneier also slammed Mr. Mamdani’s Nakba video as “propaganda,” echoing concerns from other Jewish leaders who said it excluded context about Jewish peoples’ displacement during the period.

The video, which appeared to be the first such recognition from a sitting New York City Mayor, featured the story of a woman who was displaced at nine years old, interspersed with text about the Nakba, as she described a feeling of missing home, saying “it’s the soft hills of Palestine that actually touched me.”

“I’ve lived in different places, and I’ve always been an outsider,” said the woman, Inea Bushnaq.

Supporters of Israel were outraged, saying the video should have acknowledged the mass displacement of Jews from Muslim-majority countries or the role that the mass slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust played in the drive to establish a Jewish state.

Mayors in New York City, which has America’s largest Jewish population, have long been visible supporters of Israel, often visiting the country.

Support for Israel among Americans has deeply eroded in recent years, though, a trend that accelerated amid the outcry over Israeli military action in Gaza..

Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim Mayor, has remained steadfast in his pro-Palestinian advocacy.

He has said he believes Israel has a right to exist but not as a hierarchy that favors Jewish citizens. Simultaneously he has pledged to protect Jewish New Yorkers and highlighted the work of the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

Published – June 01, 2026 08:13 am IST

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (left) walks out of Gracie Mansion with New York Police commissioner Jessica Tisch (second from left) to make an address at a news conference on March 9, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP