As part of the all-India project the ethnographic survey of Dadra and Nagar Haveli was taken up for the first time. Fourteen communities were identified and studied. Dadra and Nagar Haveli was one of the three Portuguese possessions on the borders of south Gujarat and north Maharashtra. It was known as Konkan or Apyantak and ruled by Konkan rulers in the ancient times. It was a part of the Dharampur state under the domination of Maratha Peshwas before it was ceded to the Portuguese. The Portuguese rule of about 170 years apart, Dadra and Nagar Haveli has been part of the mainland. The communities studied under the project include the tribals, peasants, traders and artisans.

Kumar Suresh Singh (1935–2006) was an IAS officer, who served as a Director General of the Anthropological Survey of India. He is well-known in academic circles for his compilation of the massive survey, People of India, which is a series with more than 40 volumes. 

He wrote another pioneering book Famine in India in 1967. He said that famine and drought is usually man-made and its catastrophes are due to corruption. He was constantly transferred from one posting to another, till he was made Director General of the Anthropological Survey of India (ASI).

People of India, a monumental survey of the entire human surface of India, was launched in 1985 when Kumar Suresh was leading the Anthropological Survey of India (ASI). It was the first post-colonial survey of people in this part of the earth, and took more than seven years to complete. It sought to create a fair and unbiased anthropological profile of the communities living in India and to study the changes and impact of the development process in the post-1947 era. The project was gigantic and involved personnel not only working in the ASI, but also university scholars, social and political activists, tribal researchers as well as historians.