Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week the history of America's health care system.

There are 110 million people in this country who... care system.

There are 110 million people in this country who can't afford proper medical attention.

That's a disgrace to the richest country in the world.

Plus the horror of being caught up in one of the most notorious hijackings of the 1970s, the joy of devising a super successful website,

and how the UN was eventually persuaded to apologize for the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti.

On behalf of the United Nations, I want to say very clearly, we apologize to the Haitian

people.

But we begin this week with a story of female empowerment up to a point and male addiction.

In 1995 the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh announced a total ban on the selling and consumption of alcohol.

It was the culmination of several years of campaigning by women who blamed liquor for high rates of domestic violence and for exacerbating poverty in rural

areas. Bob Howard has been talking to the women's activist Punyavati

Sankara about the ban, its impact and why it didn't last.

Women have suffered a lot because of this alcohol in the countryside.

In some villages, these men under the influence of liquor, they were committing sexual violence against

their own family members. The ban was seen as a major success for the Indian

women's movement and led to a major social change in the state with a population in the 1990s of over 60 million people.

For Punyavati Sankara, who was Secretary of Andhra Pradesh's All India Women's Democratic Association, it was a highlight of 40 years of

campaigning for women and against alcohol or liquor. Arrak is one of the most potent types of alcohol

consumed in India.

Arak means country liquor.

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