However, my argument (stated differently) that passion is a luxury that not everyone can afford, still stands.
Passion is a luxury in India, yes, but because of the way society has been set up. We need to change things so as to nurture the passions of our people, rather than have them scrambling for basic necessities. I believe we have all the ingredients to make it happen, but seem to lack the will or a plan.
In historic times, and to a lesser extent even now, careers were decided based on family, so there yes societal setup led to suppression of passion. However, even then how much of that was due to economic reasons and how much societal if a difficult question to answer, at least for me.
But, OTOH, I do agree that India has all the ingredients to become much greater - how do we get there is a much more complicated topic.
Everybody's is.
Imagine what goes in the mind of a boy, who is living and watching crores of people starving in his country.
Unless you have abundance for everyone, every ones gathers what they can for themselves.
A poorly funded school is a governmental/societal failing. As is the inability to afford basic necessities. It should simply never be that way. We produce enough food to feed c. 10bn people, yet parts of the world go hungry. We can cheaply disseminate education almost anywhere today, yet large portions of the world remain uneducated. In a country like India, these things can now be addressed, if only there was a plan and a sincere effort to execute that plan.
I did not mean to hurt you and I sincerely hope you escape/have escaped your hell, but more importantly, that you don't create hell for others once you do escape. Perhaps even try to alleviate the hell of others when you are able to do so.
My point is, given the resources we have, life doesn't need to be hell. It can be good, if we manage things properly.
People here still fight elections on the basis of religion and caste.