Do something, China is outpacing India in the sciences. This was the alarming message Indian scientists tried to convey to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chaired the second meeting of his Scientific Advisory Council (SAC to PM) at his residence this weekend.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, council chairman C N R Rao ‘‘raised alarm at the dramatic increase in scientific research in China and warned that India may be losing its edge’’. Rao sought “bold measures to revitalise science” in India.

The SAC to the PM exemplified the Chinese specter using a recent study by the US government. According to the study, in the last 25 years, China’s research output has increased more than 25 times in comparison to India’s.

The study compares the number of published research papers in both countries and surmises that all is not well with Indian science. ‘‘The difference between China and India is dramatic,’’ says lead author of the study R N Kostoff from the Office of Naval Research, US Ministry of Defence, Arlington, US.

According to the exhaustive 300-page study, between 1980 and 2005, China increased its number of scientific papers published in quality journals by over 104 times, while India could manage to do it only by 2.3 times. Concerned over the way China is making rapid strides, Union Minister for Science, Technology and Ocean Development Kapil Sibal says ‘‘we cannot lag behind China’’ and according to him the Prime Minister has tasked the council to prepare a roadmap ‘‘to reverse this trend’’.

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