Cannot find Ncurses when I run "make menuconfig"

["J.S.Sahambi" <jsahambi@iitg.ernet.in>]

I tried "make menuconfig" with 2.4.29 and it says:
***********************************************
jsahambi@ws97:~/kernel$ make menuconfig
rm -f include/asm
( cd include ; ln -sf asm-i386 asm)
make -C scripts/lxdialog all
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/jsahambi/kernel/scripts/lxdialog'
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncurses
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

>> Unable to find the Ncurses libraries.
>>
>> You must have Ncurses installed in order
>> to use 'make menuconfig'

make[1]: *** [ncurses] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jsahambi/kernel/scripts/lxdialog'
make: *** [menuconfig] Error 2
*************************************************

Then I executed dpkg and the result was:

************
jsahambi@ws97:~/kernel$ dpkg -l|grep ncurses
ii  libncurses5    5.2.20020112a- Shared libraries for terminal handling
ii  mtr-tiny       0.51-1         Full screen ncurses traceroute tool
ii  ncurses-base   5.2.20020112a- Descriptions of common terminal types
ii  ncurses-bin    5.2.20020112a- Terminal-related programs and man pages
ii  ncurses-term   5.2.20020112a- Additional terminal type definitions
*************

So what additional I need to to get make menuconfig working
Thanksing in advance
J S Sahambi