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Critical condition

Drug majors are shifting clinical trials out of India as lawmakers turn on the heat

They will come to inspect after the horse has bolted from the stable,” grumbles a visibly miffed Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. The chairman and managing director of Biocon is seated in her tastefully decorated meeting room at the Bengaluru headquarters, where the walls are adorned with paintings by Scottish artist Tom Robertson and bright sunlight pours in through the large windows. The Watson & Creek meeting room is named after the Nobel laureates who discovered DNA; in fact, all meeting rooms at India’s largest biotech firm are named after Nobel Prize winning scientists. This is just another sign that Biocon takes its research seriously, the biggest indicator, of course, being that like most other large Indian pharmas, it is working at breakneck speed to be the first to launch an Indian blockbuster drug. And that explains why Mazumdar-Shaw is unhappy.