Accessing a specific power base for a given set of people through a process-oriented, mainstream, organisational forum leads to the development of a representative organisation for that set of people. This is the fifth strand in our conceptualisation of empowerment. In this chapter we look at the issues involved in building representative organisations for all sets of people in a society and their relationship with empowerment.

A representative organisation necessarily represents people or interests. In a large democracy like India, there is a constant interplay between the forces of participative democracy and representative democracy. In a participative democracy all the eligible members of a system are directly involved in running it whereas in a representative democracy all the eligible members of a system elect their representatives for running it. The State in India is primarily a representative democracy except at the unit of the village where in the form of the Gram Sabha it becomes a participative democracy. All other manifestations of the State ranging from Gram Panchayat to Taluka Panchayat to Zilla Panchayat to State Assembly to Parliament are representative forums. Other organisational fora such as companies, cooperatives, societies have elements of both participative and representative democracy in their functioning.

Participative democracy by definition does not have to concern itself with who has the right to represent, but it is necessary to understand these nuances in a representative democracy.