"Poor people in the villages haven't started asserting themselves yet. But when they do, then our work will be much more difficult because we will be identified as people who are organizing and promoting them," Abed says.
Back in Dowtia, a village about an hour's drive northwest of Dhaka, people power is not in the air. But the story of Renu Begum, like that of her neighbor Shahnaz, points up the deep social shifts brought about by the spread of microcredit -- which in the case of BRAC is extended almost exclusively to women.
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