Kumar Suresh Singh came from a privileged background, growing up in Munger, Bihar. He studied history, gaining a first-class BA from Patna University. He subsequently obtained a master's degree, and finally a PhD on the subject of the revolutionary, Birsa Munda. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1958. He worked among the Santhals and then spent the period 1965–1968 as Deputy Commissioner at Palamu, in the Chhotanagpur area. This posting coincided with the Bihar famine, for which he helped to organise relief and which introduced some innovative approaches that have subsequently been adopted elsewhere. His posts in the government of Bihar included being Secretary in various departments: Industries, Rural Development, and Forest and Environment. A. K. Sinha has noted that "Because of his honesty, integrity and adherence to the norms of administration, he was not allowed to complete his term in any department in Bihar." In between these various government posts, Singh returned to Chhotanagpur as Commissioner for the period 1978–1980. In 1984 he was appointed Director-General of the Anthropological Survey of India and also Director of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal. Although Singh retired from the ASI in 1993, he remained General Editor of the People of India series until his death on 20 May 2006. He completed the final volume just before dying, having previously suffering partial paralysis from a stroke. He was a National Fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research at the time of his death. Muchkund Dubey subsequently commented that
Tribal studies
Singh wrote a PhD thesis on Birsa Munda, the leader of an insurgency campaign against British rule. To do this he had to rely significantly on folk-lore and other forms of oral history practised by the tribal inhabitants of the Jharkhand area of Bihar, where in total he spent 15 years conducting fieldwork. Although Singh considered Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi to be the first mainstream subaltern historian, Sinha notes that Singh himself may have been. He went on to produce other works on tribal history.
People of India
Singh had responsibility for the organisation, compilation and oversight of the People of India survey, which was intended to be an anthropological study of the differences and linkages between all of the communities in India.The survey involved 470 scholars and identified 4694 communities during its period of fieldwork between October 1985 and 1994. Sinha notes a total of 3000 scholars, which figure appears to include those involved at various seminars and workshops. The full results of the survey fill 43 published volumes, of which 12 had been produced at the time of Singh's death. The purpose and methodology of the survey has received criticism. Laura Dudley Jenkins, for example, has said that A review of the first volume of the series over Contributions to Indian Sociology, noted:- Another opinion favourably contrasts the project with colonial ethnography, with Sinha saying that
Publications
Aside from his writing, as author and as editor, in volumes related to the People of India survey, Singh also wrote and edited other works, a selection of which are:
