Well, It is not Lucene alone, there are many tools in java written around Lucene such as ElasticSearch/Solr/Elassandra and so on, so no language or runtime can replace everything. Eventually something might catch-up. That is why it is not language alone! It is developer, runtime, ecosystem and problem domain, brainshare.
Since many comments mentions that hard-work alone doesn't matter.
According to Daniel Kahneman, mere hard-work doesn't click unless we have access to expert feedback in the domain we work. He used to compare hard working f1-formula-driver without any input from past drivers vs driver with input from expert.
Hard work without mentor won't click. Environment and people around us also matter as much as the hard-work we do.
In a interview (few years back), Linus mentioned that he read many books related to Genes and medical science related to that! He supposed to be expert in that domain too!
Most of the tier-1 cities has direct international or national airways connectivity.
Tier-3 cities may not even have a single factory, it is hub for 100s villages, has decent bus-connectivity to nearest tier-2 city.