In 1981, as a young MPhil scholar at the University of Kashmir, I spoke optimistically at a national conference on environmental education. I believed awareness would lead to action, knowledge to responsibility. Forty-five years later, I stand in the same Valley asking a harder question: What went wrong?The Kashmir I see is beautiful but fragile. Its rivers carry plastic instead of stories. Its lakes struggle to breathe beneath waste and its soils absorb chemicals. Yet the most troubling symptom is not pollution itself, it is our ability to celebrate while it happens. No symbol captures this contradiction better than the Wazwan.
For centuries, the Wazwan has represented Kashmir’s finest identity, hospitality, craftsmanship, and collective memory. The aroma of tabak maaz, the softness of rista and gushtaba, families gathered around a shared trami, these are rituals woven into our cultural DNA. The Wazwan tells guests, “You are welcome here.”
Yet beneath this magnificent tradition lies an environmental catastrophe we refuse to see. At weddings, feasts, and gatherings, disposable plastic cups, Styrofoam bowls, glossy sheets, and single-use water pouches have become normal. They shine under wedding lights for minutes before being discarded into drains, fields, and streams. We seldom ask where this waste goes. We rarely discuss the lack of recycling or segregation. Public advocacy is minimal, enforcement is nearly absent, Instead, there is silence, a silence wrapped in celebration. We have grown so accustomed to convenience that we no longer notice the damage. What should disturb us has become invisible. The tragedy is not just the plastic but it is our acceptance of it.Recently, I visited a controlled-environment farm promoting organic agriculture. Scattered throughout were discarded polythene bags and plastic remnants from seedling containers. I collected the waste and spoke with the farmer. The problem was not resources, it was awareness. The waste had simply become part of the landscape, no longer worthy of notice. That moment reminded me of Ladakh. When I first visited between 2005 and 2007, and returned a decade later, the transformation was striking, a visible culture of environmental responsibility. People did not litter. Public spaces were clean and community ownership was evident.
One morning, I watched a cow wander into a park. Two local women immediately approached me. Together, we guided the animal out. A small incident, but profound: the women felt responsible. The park belonged to them. Its care was not someone else’s job. That is what awareness does. When communities develop ownership, environmental responsibility becomes culture, not policy. Why has Ladakh cultivated this while Kashmir struggles? One possible explanation: exposure. During decades of conflict and instability in Kashmir, Ladakh welcomed international visitors from societies where environmental consciousness had become social norm. Sustained interaction may have transferred values alongside a sense of economic benefits. Conversely, irresponsible tourism weakens local practices. This is why we must stop blaming tourists. Tourists reflect the societies they enter. If we litter rivers, dump plastic, and tolerate pollution, we cannot expect visitors to behave differently. Responsibility begins with us.
For decades, environmental education has been taught in our schools. Students learn definitions, climate change, biodiversity, sustainability and pass exams. Yet the crisis deepens. Why? Because we confused information with transformation. We treated environmental education as content to be delivered, not a relationship to be lived. We measured memorization, not habits. We rewarded knowledge, not behaviour, while our awareness has increased responsibility has not. The deeper challenge is that sustainability often feels distant. For a family struggling for survival, environmental responsibility can seem a luxury. At the opposite end, affluence encourages overconsumption. In both situations, the system nudges behaviour away from sustainability.
After four decades of observing decline, I have reached a difficult conclusion: awareness campaigns, slogans, and moral appeals are necessary but insufficient. We need enforcement and meaningful regulations. We need functioning recycling systems, waste segregation at every household, market, mosque, school, and wedding venue. Most importantly, we need to redefine honour itself.A truly honourable feast should not leave mountains of plastic. A truly honourable celebration should not poison the land that sustains it. We must rediscover alternatives, metal utensils, clay vessels, biodegradable materials, traditions that existed long before disposable culture invaded our lives. The Wazwan is a masterpiece but no masterpiece survives if the ground beneath it is poisoned.
The greatest threat facing our generation is not lack of information. Environmental knowledge is available at a touch. The danger is our inability to act on what we already know. Future generations will not inherit merely our achievements. They will inherit the consequences of our choices. Corruption, inequality, and institutional failures shape our society. But environmental destruction may prove more consequential because it quietly undermines everything else. A polluted river cannot sustain life, a degraded ecosystem cannot feed communities, damaged environment weakens economies, cultures, and futures alike. Nature does not negotiate it grants no exemptions for tradition, convenience, or political excuses.
We have been generous hosts to our guests for centuries and perfected the art of hospitality. Now we must learn a different stewardship: being responsible hosts to our own land. The plastic beneath the trami, the waste beside the river, the discarded cup at a wedding these are not isolated problems they are warnings. And like every warning ignored too long, they grow louder with time. The ticking has already begun.
Dr. Farooq Wasil is a published author, educationist, and currently serves as the CAO of the Vasal Education Group and Founding Director of Thinksite Services Private Limited.