India needs to tackle poverty to ensure place in world: Ansari

from The Hindu

A novel programme to apprise foreign Parliamentarians of Indian origin about the country's progress got off here on Wednesday, with Vice-President M Hamid Ansari saying the country needed to address the challenge of poverty to ensure its place in the world.

Inaugurating the programme, Ansari said India's achievements in many fields, and successes on the economic front, are substantial.

"And yet, there are other realities -- of dehumanising poverty, of perpetual struggles for survival, of painful contrasts," he told the gathering of 16 delegates from Europe and the US.

"These realities need to be understood in their totality since they cover three-fourth of our population and put in perspective the macro-economic growth aggregates," he said.

Ansari said that in the "final analysis, our success in addressing these challenges would determine our place in the world."

Linking the stand taken by the country in international fora to its concerns for tackling poverty-related issues, he said "they account for the correctives that we are compelled to apply in order to ensure inclusive growth; they also provide the rationale for the positions we take in multilateral negotiations on trade, environment and a range of related questions."

During the programme, the delegates would be updated on a range of issues in the context of country's development.

The objective of the programme would be "served if the invitees depart with better comprehension of what the land of their ancestors is about and what are its hopes and aspirations", Ansari said.