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Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old who soared to the lead in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, describes himself as a democratic socialist. But some politicians and social media posts falsely labelled him a communist.

President Donald Trump called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic”, in a June 25 Truth Social post.

Nick Sortor, a conservative podcast host, wrote June 23 on X, “Zohran Mamdani is not even a socialist. He’s a full on COMMUNIST,” sharing a video clip of Mamdani calling for a network of city-owned grocery stores. “Even FURTHER left than Bernie Sanders. He wants government-run grocery stores.”

Ben Shapiro, cofounder of conservative website The Daily Wire, said on his podcast, “The big news of the day: A communist is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.”

Representative Elise Stefanik also wrote on X that Mamdani is a “communist”.

Mamdani’s platform calls for making transportation, housing and groceries more affordable, but experts say he hasn’t espoused key tenets of communism, such as government takeover of industry and private property.

“Mamdani is NOT a communist,” wrote Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University professor of international studies, in an email to PolitiFact. “Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority. There is no democratic political competition, and instead a single party rules the country. He is not calling for any of this.”

Accusing Democrats of being communists or communist sympathisers is a frequent misleading attack line by some Republicans. It is a red scare tactic that has existed in US politics for decades, but has been transformed by the success of some democratic socialists, including US Senator Bernie Sanders.

Mamdani made national headlines June 24 after former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the primary. When the city completes the ranked choice voting process, Mamdani is expected to win. Mamdani’s office did not respond to our requests for comment.

In November, Mamdani will face Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder of civilian crime-fighting group Guardian Angels, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Cuomo left open the door to running as an independent.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Mamdani’s platform calls for some city-owned grocery stores, other affordability policies

Mamdani, who represents part of the Queens borough in the New York State Assembly, identifies as a democratic socialist.

The New York City Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Mamdani, who is a member.

The group defines its goal as “to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation”, and to have “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighbourhoods, and society”.

Mamdani’s platform includes freezing rent for tenants in buildings with preexisting caps on price increases between lease terms. He also proposed creating city-owned grocery stores, and said in a June interview with Spectrum News NY1 that he would start with one grocery store in each borough modelled on municipality-owned stores in Kansas.

He also proposed free buses and child care, and raising the corporate tax rate and the minimum wage.

Mamdani does not call for getting rid of private ownership. One of the goals included on his website is to “make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business”.

He told The New York Times that he changed his mind about the role of the private market in housing construction, saying, “I clearly recognise now that there is a very important role to be played.” The story links to Mamdani’s website, which calls for the public sector to build affordable housing but not take over all housing.

What are the differences between communism and democratic socialism?

We sent highlights from Mamdani’s platform to seven experts across academic disciplines including political science, law and anthropology. None concluded that Mamdani is a communist.

“The idea that Mamdani is a communist is an absurd slander,” said Geoffrey Kurtz, associate professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

When US politicians use the term democratic socialism, they are referring to generous social insurance programmes often available in European countries, such as heavily subsidised child care, along with high tax rates, if needed, to pay for education and healthcare.

Mamdani doesn’t seek to do away with private property or advocate a government takeover of any industry, said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor. Instead, Mamdani proposes targeted interventions to tackle high living costs in New York City, Henken said.

“The New Yorkers who support him seem to do so not because of any communist ideology on his or their part, but because he proposes to address this crisis of affordability,” Henken said.

“For example, his city-run grocery store idea does not propose to take over or do away with the private grocery chains (they already receive city subsidies) but to complement them with nonprofit city-run stores,” Henken said.

Although Mamdani said in a campaign TikTok video that he would “redirect funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores”, he did not say he would get rid of corporate markets. Mamdani also said city-owned markets would work with privately owned small businesses and farms.

Political theory experts said many of Mamdani’s proposals have existed in other democracies for decades.

“Many western democracies – from France to Canada – have policies such as free or heavily subsidised child care and public transit,” said Oxana Shevel, a Tufts University associate professor of comparative politics.

Under a communist agenda, the government would own everything and entirely control prices, not only rent control or operating some supermarkets. And under communism, there are no political parties other than the communist party.

“This is not what he’s advocating,” Shevel said. “So no, he’s not a ‘communist’.”

Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, said Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism.

“At least in theory, they reject such communist concepts as the vanguard of the proletariat and the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said. “That said, there are a number of issues on which they agree, including hostility to capitalism.”

Experts said there are reasonable critiques of Mamdani’s proposals, but that doesn’t make his proposals communist.

Our ruling

Trump said Mamdani is a communist.

Mamdani’s mayoral platform proposes making New York City more affordable, including via free buses and day care, rent control and city-owned grocery stores. That is not akin to communism, a system in which the government controls the means of production and takes over private businesses. Mamdani has not called for the elimination of private ownership.

He also hasn’t called for eliminating democracy and political parties, another tenet of communism.

We rate this statement False.

New Delhi, India – Paras* and his family were supposed to have the financial difficulties over by enrolling in one of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) schools. Instead, things have only worsened due to the federal government’s long delays in dispensing Paras’s monthly fellowship allowance of 37, 000 rupees ($435).

Paras is a research fellow at the IIT looking for solutions to the world’s growing infectious disease crisis. His fellowship is a result of the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST) funding program INSPIRE.

But delays in the scheme’s payment have meant that Paras was not able to pay the instalments on the laptop he bought for his research in 2022. His savings plans and credit score fell, too.

In a drought-stricken region of western India, Paras’ parents are farmers, and their income depends on a frequently subpar harvest. So, he has resorted to borrowing money from friends, including as recently as between August and December, he told Al Jazeera.

Paras is not the only one. Nearly a dozen top institutes in India are currently and former researchers, according to the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) initiative. The interviewees studied at institutions such as the IIT, a network of engineering and technology schools across the country, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, another network.

Without a stipend, all had gone from three to nine months.

According to them, the fellowship’s deterioration and procedural lapses have resulted from these delays in funding and insufficient funding.

Many researchers recently took to social media to complain, tagging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh.

Many of us who are pursuing PhDs under DST-funded fellowships have been receiving their stipends for more than a year, according to Sayali Atkare, an INSPIRE fellow, who posted a LinkedIn post. Many young researchers are now experiencing significant financial and emotional stress as a result.

Last year, India ranked 39th in the Global Innovation Index of 133 countries, up one spot from the year prior. In terms of innovation, it leads lower-middle-income nations like Vietnam and the Philippines. Malaysia and Turkiye are the two countries with the highest incomes, followed by China.

The federal government termed the ranking an “impressive leap” in a news release. According to the statement, India’s “growing innovation potential” has been backed by government initiatives that prioritize technological advancement, business ease, and entrepreneurship.

Modi praised India’s expanding research potential at a federal government conference in April. Under his leadership in the past decade, the government has doubled its gross spending on research and development from 600 billion rupees ($7.05bn) to more than 1, 250 billion rupees ($14.7bn), while the number of patents filed has more than doubled – from 40, 000 to more than 80, 000.

The government has made numerous efforts to ensure “talented individuals face no obstacles to advancing their careers,” Modi said, including double the spending on R&amp, D (research and development), double the number of patents filed in India, and the creation of state-of-the-art research parks and fellowships and facilities. &gt ,

However, an analysis of government documents, budgets and interviews with researchers reveals that the government is more focused on commercial research, primarily product development led by start-ups and big corporations. It doesn’t provide much funding for research conducted at the nation’s top universities.

For instance, a program that provides interest-free loans to private companies conducting research in sunrise domains like semiconductors made up of 70 percent of the Science and Technology Department’s annual budget for the current fiscal year.

At the same time, the government has made misleading statements about its investments in the country’s research institutes, including with schemes like the INSPIRE fellowship, where funds have actually been cut instead of being increased as touted by the government.

Pay issues, delayed funding, and poor pay

The INSPIRE scheme offers PhD and faculty fellowships to “attract, attach, retain and nourish talented young scientific Human Resource for strengthening the R&amp, D foundation and base”.

Top-ranking postgraduate students and doctoral researchers are eligible to receive fellowships to conduct research in fields ranging from climate science, biochemistry, neuroscience, cancer biology, biotechnology, and renewable energy.

PhD fellows are eligible for a monthly salary of 37, 000 rupees ($435.14) to 42, 000 rupees ($493.94) for living expenses under the scheme, as well as a salary of 20 000 rupees ($235.21) per year for research-related expenses, such as paying for equipment or traveling to work.

Faculty fellows are offered teaching positions with a monthly salary of 125, 000 rupees ($1, 470) and an annual research grant of 700, 000 rupees ($8, 232).

653 fellows enrolled in the PhD fellowship program between 2024 and 2025, and 85 were in the faculty fellowship program.

A faculty member at an institution in eastern India said, “I was unable to attend an important annual meeting in our field because it required travel.” He has not received his payments since September 2024.

We’ve made endless phone calls and written countless emails, most of which leave the message unanswered or are met with ambiguous responses, according to Atkare, a PhD student who wrote about the government’s failure on LinkedIn. Even some government officials “reply” rudely.

Another INSPIRE PhD fellow told us of a running joke: “If they pick up the phone, you can buy a lottery ticket that day. Your lucky day is today.

Abhay Karandikar, DST Secretary, acknowledged the delays in funding in May and promised to fix them right away.

Karandikar told the Hindu newspaper that he was “aware” of the disbursement crisis but said that from June 2025, all scholars would get their money on time. “Every issue has been resolved,” the statement read. He said, “I don’t anticipate any issues in the future.”

Al Jazeera requested a comment from the science and technology minister, the DST secretary and the head of the department’s wing that implements the INSPIRE scheme, but has not received a response.

Dodgy math

To launch Vigyan Dhara, or “the flow of science,” in January, the federal government folded three R&amp, D-related initiatives to ensure “efficiency in fund utilisation.” The INSPIRE scheme had been funded under one of those schemes.

But chaos has resulted in chaos instead of efficiency.

DST requested new bank accounts from institutions during Vigyan Dhara, which caused delays in the payment of INSPIRE fellowships.

New Delhi also said that it had “significantly increased” funding for the Vigyan Dhara scheme, from 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) in the last financial year to 14.25 billion rupees ($167.58m) in the current financial year.

That math, however, was not accurate. The 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) is what the government earmarked for the scheme, which was only launched in the last quarter of the fiscal year. The three schemes’ annual budget, which was replaced by Vigyan Dhara, totaled 18.27 billion rupees ($214.93 million). In effect, the allocation to the current budget decreased by 22%, from 18.27 billion to 14.25 billion ($167.58 million).

Overall, the budget for Vigyan Dhara’s constituent schemes decreased by 67.8% from the previous fiscal year, which was the same as the previous fiscal year, which was the same as the budget for the remaining schemes, which was the same as the budget for the remaining ones, which was the same as 167.6 million rupees.

According to Al Jazeera, DST officials did not respond to a request for information on Vigyan Dhara’s budgetary allocations.

Commercialisation of research

The Indian government, on the other hand, allocated 200 billion rupees ($2.35 billion) to the new R&D and innovation (RDI) initiative targeted at the private sector.

This money is a larger 1-trillion-rupee ($11.76bn) corpus that India’s finance minister announced to offer low- or no-interest rates.

These changes in schemes are intended to make India a “product nation”, get more patents filed in India, and curb the brain drain, as Union Minister Aswini Vaishnaw and DST officials explain in different videos.

However, the researchers’ issues at state-run organizations continue to be unresolved.

“The government throws around big terms, but those toiling in laboratories are suffering”, said Lal Chandra Vishwakarma, president of All-India Research Scholars Association.

“Stipends should be paid in the same way that central government employees are paid. He argued that subscribers should receive their money on a consistent basis each month.

In the current scenario, most fellows Al Jazeera spoke to said that they would prefer a fellowship abroad.

“It’s not just about money; it’s also about the ease of research, which is much better in Europe and [in] the United States.” There is a lot of staff there. In India, you get none of that”, said a professor at an IIT, who supervises an INSPIRE PhD fellow who faced funding issues.

Researchers told us that researchers who are heavily funded in the private sector should downplay their funding costs to increase their chances of getting funded by government research projects.

If we lose the first few years as a result of cost-cutting, we are behind our colleagues abroad, the IIT professor said.

“Once we submit necessary documents, like annual progress reports, DST takes at least three months to release the next instalment. A theoretical mathematician who works on a PhD said, “It’s standard.”

“As of right now, I would advise only people with high-income backgrounds and privileges to work in academia.” Not because that’s how it should be, but because for others, it’s just so hard”, the IIT professor said.