The People Of India was a project of the Anthropological Survey of India conducted between October 1985 and March 1992, under the direction of Kumar Suresh Singh.^[1][2]

Project Methodology

The POI project conducted group and individual interviews. The interviews were conducted in 3581 mostly multi-community villages, and in 1011 towns and cities spread over 421 out of 465 districts and 91 cultural regions.^[3]

Outputs

A major achievement of this project was the preparation of cartographic maps showing the distribution of the communities and the location where they were studied. About 4000 maps were prepared. Yet another achievement was the visual documentation of the people of India as part of the field operations. About 21,362 photographs were generated, mostly in black & white, but a substantial number in colour, by amateur photographers. The material has been published in two interrelated parts. The first consists of the eleven volume national series, which contains an abstract on all communities across the length and breadth of the country. The data generated in this respect has been strengthened by the addition of information from census and other secondary sources. The volumes include two on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, prepared as part of the celebration of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s birth centenary; three on all the communities of India; and two containing data on the languages and biological structure of India’s population. The remaining volumes contain the quantitative profile, social segments, listings of communities, etc. The second part comprises the state: union territory volumes based on a detailed write-up on each community of India. The first results of univariate analysis of this database were published in March 1990.

References