Srinagar, Aug. 1 -- By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

Jammu and Kashmir just approved a large-scale waste management project at Achan, and officials are calling it a milestone.

It is not nothing.

Scientific collection, transport and processing beat the alternative that has defined the valley for years: garbage dumped into open fields, burned in villages, left to settle on riverbanks.

Praise for Achan is fair, but praise should stop short of relief, though, because Achan answers the wrong question.

The real question sitting underneath it, the one nobody in government has been forced to answer yet, is whether Kashmir plans to manage plastic waste forever, or whether it plans to stop so much plastic from entering the valley in the first place.

Any...