  Continuous high-cadence and high-spatial resolution Dopplergrams allow us to
study sub-surface dynamics that may be further extended to explore precursors
of visible solar activity on the surface. Since the p-mode power is absorbed in
the regions of high magnetic field, the inferences in these regions are often
presumed to have large uncertainties. In this paper, using the Dopplergrams
from space-borne Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI), we compare horizontal
flows in a shear layer below the surface and the photospheric layer in and
around active regions. The photospheric flows are calculated using local
correlation tracking (LCT) method while the ring-diagram (RD) technique of
helioseismology is used to infer flows in the sub-photospheric shear layer. We
find a strong positive correlation between flows from both methods near the
surface. This implies that despite the absorption of acoustic power in the
regions of strong magnetic field, the flows inferred from the helioseismology
are comparable to those from the surface measurements. However, the magnitudes
are significantly different; the flows from the LCT method are smaller by a
factor of 2 than the helioseismic measurements. Also, the median difference
between direction of corresponding vectors is 49 degree.
