Necessity of Literature in Technical Programmes

Abstract:

The economic and social transformations from 1990s have raised new opportunities for an
educated, English speaking group. Any talented urban youth with the appropriate technical
training and good communication skill especially with good command over English language
today can easily enter the IT industry and really hope to promote themselves in their areas
and travel far and wide. But if someone has mastered technical skills and learned to use the
communication templates effectively, does that make the person suitable to place her/him
anywhere in the globe. If a Japanese person, whose world-view is formed as much by
Buddhism and Shintoism , how can s/he accommodate in the West whose mind is formed by
ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity. The answer is literature. When we read a work of
fiction, we come to identify with the characters. We come to know them from the inside.
Literature is how we download another’s mind into our own. We realise ‘their’ culture and
‘our’ culture, similarities and dissimilarities. This paper is an attempt to suggest and analyse
few literary pieces that will allow the technical students o inhabit the life and world of
different people.