Government officials in India have often boasted that Aadhaar, the controversial national biometric identity programme, has saved the country billions of dollars by eliminating fraudulent beneficiaries from welfare schemes. To support their point, many—most recently finance minister Arun Jaitley—have cited a 2016 World Bank report (pdf) that estimated potential yearly savings from Aadhaar to be $11 billion (Rs77,000 crore) per year. In response to the government’s liberal use of the World...