The paradox of Operational Research OR in India

This paper discusses the paradox of Operational Research OR in India where a strong theoretical base has evolved alongside very limited use of Operational Research OR in practice. The author argues that this is not due to limited applicability of the Operational Research OR approach in developing country context. On the contrary, in a situation such as India’s, it is shown through examples that substantial improvements in the productivity of capital can be achieved by focusing on important application areas. Drawing on these and other experiences the author identifies reasons for the existence of the paradox and offers a number of suggestions to the Operational Research OR community to help resolve it. The major suggestions are to modify Operational Research OR education to emphasize real-world problem-solving skills, to adopt more of a DSS orientation, to exploit the availability of microcomputers and to use spreadsheet software to develop simple but effective decision models.