British citizens hold a National Insurance number and Americans a Social Security number. Now cows and buffaloes in India will be given 'animal health cards', similar to the Aadhar system already in place for Indian citizens.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated a plan to assign unique 12-digit identification numbers to 88 million cattle in India by the end of 2017.

Yellow tags are being placed on the animals' ears by 100,000 technicians across the country in an effort to boost the income of the dairy sector by 2022.

Details for each animal will then be placed in an online database.