Anil Kumar
A field-research and operations professional with seven years of experience across state coordination, survey supervision, programme monitoring and large field-team management.
His professional background covers financial inclusion, financial literacy, skills, livelihoods, health, nutrition, disability, water and rural-development assignments across multiple states. At MFRS, that experience is focused on the practical side of research — preparing teams, organising field operations and keeping execution connected to the study plan.
← Back to Our TeamExperience built across states, teams and different kinds of field assignments.
Anil’s work has moved between state coordination, district coordination, monitoring, team leadership and field supervision. That variety matters because managing a survey well requires more than knowing how to collect data — it requires understanding how people, geography, timelines and quality controls fit together.
A field career shaped by increasing operational responsibility.
Anil’s professional experience has been built largely around survey execution and monitoring assignments where field teams have to work across districts and states under defined study protocols.
His responsibilities have ranged from supervising investigators and managing large field teams to state-level coordination, programme monitoring and district-level execution.
Financial inclusion and financial literacy form an important part of that background, but his experience extends well beyond those sectors. He has also worked on health and nutrition studies, skill-development programmes, livelihood monitoring, disability surveys, water-sector assignments and health-system assessments.
A number of these projects were undertaken within field structures coordinated by Manish Patel, now Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at MFRS. That earlier working relationship gives MFRS a senior operations team that already understands how the other works under actual field conditions.
Field Supervision
Managing investigators, daily targets, field movement and assignment-level execution.
Team Leadership
Experience leading field teams ranging up to 100 Field Research Executives on a single assignment.
Monitoring
Field monitoring across financial literacy, livelihoods, health, water and other development-sector programmes.
State Coordination
Coordinating multi-district field operations and supporting execution across different state environments.
The work between receiving a study plan and delivering reliable field data.
Anil’s strongest contribution is operational. His experience has repeatedly required him to take project requirements and help turn them into functioning field structures — people, locations, supervision and monitoring working together.
State-Level Coordination
Organising field activity across districts and maintaining coordination between field teams and the wider project structure.
Team Management
Experience supervising and managing field personnel on assignments ranging from district work to larger multi-state surveys.
Field Deployment
Supporting the practical arrangement of teams, locations and day-to-day field movement according to assignment needs.
Programme Monitoring
Monitoring implementation and field conditions across government and development-sector programmes.
Quality Awareness
Maintaining attention to whether planned field processes are actually being followed during implementation.
Multi-State Operations
Working across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.
Household Research
Experience in field studies involving households and community respondents across financial, health and development subjects.
Institutional Fieldwork
Experience working within assignments connected with skills, health, rural livelihoods and public-service programmes.
Team Coordination
Keeping investigators, supervisors and project leadership connected so that field issues can be addressed while work is active.
Financial inclusion, livelihoods, skills, health and public programmes.
These assignments show the range of Anil’s earlier professional experience. They are selected because together they demonstrate coordination, supervision and monitoring across different sectors rather than only one type of survey.
NAFIS 2.0 – National Financial Inclusion Survey
A major financial-inclusion survey assignment in which Anil handled state-level coordination responsibility across three different state environments.
- Coordinated survey field operations across assigned states.
- Supported field teams working across multiple districts and locations.
- Maintained operational coordination between state-level field structures and project management.
- Worked within a large household-survey environment requiring disciplined field execution.
Rural Economic Condition & Sentiment Survey
State-level coordination for a rural economic research assignment, adding another operating geography and a rural-economy perspective to his financial-sector survey experience.
- State-level coordination of the assigned field activity.
- Support for rural respondent coverage and field execution.
- Coordination of teams working within the study framework.
Bihar Skill Development Mission
One of the strongest examples of his field-team management experience. The assignment involved responsibility for a large field structure consisting of approximately 100 Field Research Executives.
- Managed a field team of around 100 Field Research Executives.
- Supervised execution within a skill-development survey environment.
- Coordinated team activity across assigned field locations.
- Supported completion of survey work through a large investigator structure.
Central Financial Literacy Project
Multi-state monitoring experience connected with financial-literacy initiatives in rural communities.
- Monitoring across five states.
- Review of field-level implementation and community reach.
- Practical exposure to financial-literacy programmes in different rural settings.
JOHAR – Jharkhand Opportunities for Harnessing Rural Growth
Monitoring experience within a rural-livelihood programme in Jharkhand, extending his work beyond surveys into programme-oriented field monitoring.
- Field monitoring within rural programme locations.
- Experience working within a livelihoods-oriented institutional framework.
- Supported observation of field-level programme implementation.
Bihar Transformative Development Project
Team-leadership responsibility within a study connected with health, nutrition and sanitation under the Bihar Transformative Development Project.
- Led field activity within the assigned project component.
- Worked within health, nutrition and sanitation subject areas.
- Supported execution through coordination of field personnel.
Disability Survey
District-level coordination experience on a disability-focused survey covering field activity in Korba and Raigarh districts.
- Coordinated district-level field execution.
- Supported teams working on identification and survey activity.
- Managed operational requirements across assigned districts.
Jal Jeevan Mission
Monitoring experience within a major rural water programme, involving field-level review in Madhya Pradesh.
- Monitored field-level programme activity.
- Worked in rural locations within the programme framework.
- Added water and rural infrastructure exposure to his wider field portfolio.
National Family Health Survey – NFHS 5 & 6
Monitoring experience within the structured field environment of two rounds of the National Family Health Survey.
- Worked in monitoring roles connected with NFHS field activity.
- Supported adherence to survey processes in a large household-research environment.
- Added public-health survey experience to his operational background.
Assessment of Community Health Officers
Multi-state health-system assessment experience involving Community Health Officers across four states.
- Monitoring across multiple state environments.
- Experience within a health-service and provider-oriented study.
- Coordination and monitoring of field implementation across assigned areas.
Operational experience across several development sectors.
Head – Field Operations & Research
At MFRS, Anil’s role is centred on the operating side of research: helping field teams understand what has to be done, supporting deployment and supervision, and keeping project execution connected with the research requirements set by the wider leadership and project team.
The point where research planning becomes field execution.
Anil works within MFRS’s leadership and project structure on the practical organisation of field assignments. His experience is especially relevant where work requires multiple field teams, state or district coordination, monitoring, supervisor structures or large-scale deployment.
- Field operations planning. Supporting the practical organisation of field teams, supervisory structures, geography and deployment requirements.
- Team coordination. Helping supervisors and investigators remain connected with project expectations while fieldwork is active.
- State and district execution. Bringing previous coordination experience into assignments that require work across multiple districts or states.
- Field monitoring. Supporting visibility of progress, field constraints and implementation issues.
- Operational escalation. Raising field problems early rather than allowing them to remain hidden until data collection is over.
- Research-field coordination. Helping ensure that the way a survey is implemented remains aligned with the requirements of the research design.
Familiar working relationships matter when the field becomes difficult.
Experience working under established senior coordination.
Anil’s earlier professional career included assignments undertaken within field structures coordinated by Manish Patel. As a result, their working relationship at MFRS is not based only on titles or an organisational chart.
They have prior experience of the same practical field environment: distributed teams, difficult geographies, deadlines, investigator management, programme monitoring and the need to resolve problems while work is still underway.
Within MFRS, Manish brings senior strategic and operational oversight, while Anil’s role is closer to day-to-day field organisation and research execution. That distinction helps keep responsibility clear without separating senior planning from what is actually happening on the ground.
Large field teams work only when the basics remain disciplined.
Managing a hundred investigators sounds like a manpower question. In practice it is usually a coordination question: whether people know where they are going, what they are expected to do, who checks their work and what happens when the plan stops matching the field.
Clear deployment
Field teams should understand geography, workload, reporting lines and survey expectations before deployment begins.
Visible supervision
Supervisors need to remain connected with field activity rather than relying only on end-of-day numbers.
Early escalation
Problems involving access, respondents, staff or timelines should move upward while there is still time to correct them.
Realistic targets
Targets should reflect geography, questionnaire length and respondent conditions rather than being treated as identical everywhere.
Monitoring with purpose
Monitoring should help identify what is changing in the field, not simply confirm that a visit occurred.
Completion with accountability
A field target is only useful when the work behind the completed number can withstand review.
Academic and technical training alongside field experience.
Field operations are strongest when someone experienced is watching the details.
Anil brings to MFRS seven years of practical experience across state coordination, supervision, monitoring and large field-team management. As Head – Field Operations & Research, his role is to help ensure that field plans remain workable, teams remain coordinated and research requirements remain visible throughout execution.