For Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, technology and democracy go hand in hand.

Modi, who once dubbed his country the “mother of all democracies,” recently offered up India to world leaders as “an ideal testing lab for solutions.” But one of the technologies he touts isn’t a new app or smartphone — it’s the largest, most sophisticated biometric identification system in the world.

Aadhaar, or “foundation,” is a unique twelve-digit identification number assigned to 99.9 percent of all Indian adults. The number is linked to demographic and biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, stored in a centralized database. Unlike a Social Security number in the United States, India’s ID numbers were made available to all residents and even to nonresident Indians living abroad. They do not serve as proof of citizenship or any other social status.