44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST national agencies such as USAID and World Bank are pushing dangerously the strategy of 'self help programme9, the underlying philosophy of which is that the poor can help themselves. The translation of such ideology in organizational practice would seem very similar to the strategy of "empowerment through self activity". In our objective of democratising organizational practice, we ought to be clear that the need of the hour is one of enlightened leadership. Consciousness raising through self activity ought to be able to bring the inter relationship of gender and macro- structural factors, of the linkages of micro struggles with macro struggles, and of the nuances of ideological struggles in much greater clarity that what exists. The limitedness of perceptions based on limited world view and life experiences cannot constitute a democratic solution, howsoever democratically it has been arrived at.