India, Jan. 6 -- As the New Year tiptoes in with its ritualistic optimism, glittering resolutions and recycled affirmations about growth and transformation, it is an opportune moment to acknowledge a profession that has been transforming society long before hashtags made it fashionable. Teachers are, after all, the sculptors of society - though not the romanticised kind chiselling masterpieces in sunlit studios. Their workshop is a crowded classroom, their tools are patience and persistence, and their raw material is a volatile mix of curiosity, confusion, defiance, brilliance and inherited prejudice. They are expected to mould the future while standing knee-deep in systemic contradictions, armed with idealism but short on institutional b...