Srinagar, March 24 -- Perhaps it is time we created one more ministerial chair - if only to ensure that at least one MLA from the ruling Jammu and Kashmir National Conference finally has a job that is visible, measurable, and impossible to explain away in speeches. After all, portfolios in our system often come wrapped in abstraction - planning, coordination, facilitation - words that float well in files but rarely touch the ground. Cleanliness, on the other hand, is brutally honest. It either exists, or it doesn't. And in Kashmir today, it clearly does not.

Step outside the comfort of official presentations and curated visits, and the Valley tells a different story. Garbage piles lie unattended along roads that once defined postcard Kas...