The class is taught simultaneously via videoconference to students in India and America by visiting Michigan law professor Vikramaditya Khanna with a 15-week class on “Law and Economic Development in India”. Students engage in trans-atlantic discussions and are expected to participate in joint research.

Khanna is teaching two courses at JGLS this term and explores how law is relevant to the interaction between economic development and law, and students

JGLS dean and Jindal Global University vice-chancellor Raj Kumar said he was not aware of anything comparable having been done before by Indian law schools.

“It was an experiment but turned out to be fantastic,” he told Legally India. “What we thought is that we are constantly evaluating how to build a global university and global law school. One is that we have global faculty and global research. But to advance the idea of global interaction we thought it’s one thing to get one faculty come here but how about getting a dialogue with Michigan students.”

“I’m very sceptical of video conferencing but this is something that actually works. It is not a passive video conference – each of the students’ desks [in the US and India] has a button and a mic. [On] every student question the camera will automatically zoom in on [the student] and [they’ll] be put on the screen.”

The course is an elective course for JGLS second-year students. A total of 20 students in Sonipat, Haryana and 20 to 25 in Michigan attended the first class in person and virtually respectively.