By IANS
Patna : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Friday called for a special meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) on poverty to discuss the issue and to evolve measures to eradicate it.
"A special meeting of the National Development Council on poverty related issues should be convened by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to deliberate and address this complex challenge," he said while inaugurating a three-day international seminar on poverty here.
Experts from around the world are participating in the seminar.
Nitish Kumar said there was a need to evolve a credible institutional mechanism for centre-state dialogue on the core issue of poverty instead of a mere ceremonial meeting of the NDC.
He said that the special meetings convened by the prime minister recently on power and agriculture were good examples of sector-specific issues. "The overreaching issue in any development strategy must be poverty redressal. This indeed is the raison d'etre of any successful development strategy," he said.
The three-day international seminar will deliberate on various aspects of poverty in the Indian context.