| The British, not any pandemic, were the targets of the firm that launched India's pharma industry — and the production of the drug that Donald Trump touted as a silver bullet against COVID-19. Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Limited (BCPL) is today India’s only state-owned firm that manufactures the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been considered a potential treatment for COVID-19. But the firm was built to fight a different enemy. Launched in 1892, it was meant to serve as a model private firm that other Indian entrepreneurs could emulate, with the aim of providing an employment alternative to the country’s middle-class youth who otherwise had to depend on jobs in the British colonial government. | 
