MUMBAI, India — The Indian government is in thrall of the dazzle and promise of technology, seeing in it a vehicle to overcome the inefficiencies of its humongous bureaucratic apparatus. Shortly before coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi positioned himself as a digital governance evangelist.

A few months into his tenure, the Indian government began using biometric devices to tell on government employees who didn’t turn up for work. The state of Gujarat, which Mr. Modi had ruled for more than a decade, took to using biometrics to red-pen students who skipped school. Mr. Modi has argued that digital payments will check “black money” — the Indian term for unaccounted, often illegally acquired wealth — and other forms of corruption.

Under Mr. Modi’s government, Aadhaar, India’s enormous biometric identification system, which was initially promoted as a voluntary program to refine the delivery of public services and curb corruption, is increasingly seen as necessary for public and private services — giving birth in a hospital, enrolling a child in preschool, collecting your college degree, maintaining a telephone connection or a bank account, and collecting a death certificate. The government seems to be in a war of attrition with itscitizens, breaking down their resistance to the biometric identification program.

Mr. Modi, who has spoken relentlessly of his dream of a digital India and flaunted the miracle of technology by appearing in public as a three-dimensional hologram in numerous places at the same time, has described data as “real wealth” that would confer “hegemony” on “whoever acquires and controls” it.