Former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh today stressed the need for increased public and private investment in agriculture and allied fields to create more employment opportunities in rural areas.

Manmohan said China has altered its domestic agricultural management policies to make the World Trade Organisation discipline work to its advantage. He said India could also do so by amending its agricultural management chain.

Singh was speaking at a two-day workshop on "The dragon and the elephant: A comparative study of economic and agricultural reforms in China and India". It was organised jointly by the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

The workshop, which was attended by economists and policy planners from India and China, was aimed at studying the countries' differing approaches to economic and agricultural reforms.

India and China can together become an economic force to reckon with, Manmohan said.  The former minister, however, said politicians were usually slow to react to change and needed well-conceived policy reform recipes to act on.

Comparing the process of development of the two countries, J V Braun, director-general, IFPRI, said both countries had implemented a series of economic reforms that had led to annual growth rates of 9 per cent in China and 6 per cent in India. While China had been faster in implementing marketing reforms, India was the first to decentralise its economic management, he said.

"Food and agricultural policies of these two mega-economies need to be studied closely as they will potentially affect global markets significantly. If there is information flow between the dragon and the elephant on comparative advantages and transparency in marketing, trade volumes can go up several folds, benefiting millions of poor in these two countries," said Ashok Gulati, IFPRI's director of markets, trade and institutions.

The papers presented at the workshop revealed that China had given up the practice of official procurement and distribution of agricultural produce. The ownership of land, too, has virtually been privatised.

Indian economists suggested capping and phased reduction of agricultural subsidies and alterations in the minimum support price mechanism. They also suggested legalisation of land leasing with proper regulations.

Some of the top economists and policy planners from both countries are participating in the workshop.