Mira Nair on the Indian system

Mira Nair on NPR last night. She said that it was here in Harvard that she realized that she wanted to be a film maker. In India she had done acting but then the system always told her that she had to take the winding road through dominance hierarchies to reach anywwhere in life. Its in the US that she felt that people felt as if they could do anything anytime anywhere. People dont have to wait their turn. I wonder if this is still true. It was partially true 7 years back when I was in school. Ofcourse India is now brimming with the entrepreneurs and lots of talk of startups. So I assume things have definitely changed for the better. But I wonder if the new economic boost is all that we needed to make this change happen.

What if it had been our "culture" ? We are taught to  always kowtow to the older person even if the person has no other credentials other than having been born before you. We are taught not to question the teacher. The teacher is holy, knows everything and cannot be doubted. The teacher can never say "I don't know, lets find out together". So by having more wealth can we liberate ourselves from this chakravyuh ? I have seen more examples to the contrary. But then I am talking of examples in the time warped west. The sons of the soil hopefully are really finding more freedom.
There is definitely a sense of freedom amongst the teens with the call-center phenomenon. It'll be very interesting to find if this will also impact the so called "cream" who might make the choice to stay back in the country. They would be slogging their behinds off preparing for exams and might be touched only tangentially by this phenomenon. However they are the ones who are to lead us down the path of innovation. Are they not the ones to produce the next Gates and Jobs?