Five questions for Novartis India's MD

Novartis India's vice chairman and managing director Ranjit Shahani once joked that almost every passenger even on a "Virar fast local" knows about the company and its anticancer, Glivec (imatinib mesylate), with the backdrop of the Supreme Court ruling last year rejecting a patent for the product and high decibel allegations by activists that the Swiss company was attempting to get the legal framework for examining patent applications in India relaxed.

Virar is the northern-most railway station on the Western Line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway and trains headed there are...