Imagine you're a government minister in a developing country, with responsibility for improving the lives of the poorest 20 per cent of the population. Given a blank slate, it's not hard to make a list: get everybody a basic bank account; pay a small cash sum to the poorest households; enrol every poor child in primary school, using sticks or carrots to make sure the children show up; provide handouts of cash or food to those hit by natural disasters; provide free basic healthcare and vaccinations. Such a list is ambitious, but not because it's too expensive. The real constraint is that to implement any of these policies, you need to be able to identify your own citizens.

In spy thrillers, the ability to disappear from official databases is rare and highly prized. In most poor countries, the reverse is true: it's useful but hard to acquire an official identity. A state that can cheaply and reliably identify individual citizens can also provide services that would be hard to imagine without a universal identification (UID) system.

Lacking UID, well-meaning governments are forced to resort to cruder approaches to poverty reduction: grain handouts that are hijacked by well-connected middlemen; subsidised fuel that's expensive and ill-targeted and distorts the economy. According to a World Bank report last year, Social Protection for a Changing India, the country has hundreds of official anti-poverty programmes, and many of those who enjoy the benefits are not poor.