Any source for this? Intuitively I can see why working with 2k languages is harder than working with 1. But if you read e.g. a report like this: http://www.doingbusiness.org/reports

which is very relevant to SMEs, the driving force for about 98%+ of economic activity, jobs, tax revenues etc and the economic progress to increase the standard of life, you don't really see language as a variable. (and it's a pretty comprehensive report).

I mean, how bad is it, really? Most countries have multiple languages, but also a single official language. I've been to Africa many times and due to its colonial history French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, they get you pretty far in most places. In my own city we have over 175 nationalities, but communication is never a problem. It would be a mistake for an outsider who never visited to look at that number and then claim it's the origin of any particular problem in the city without any extra information. So I'm genuinely interested if you know of any studies that show the language diversity is a stifling issue.

Except that India is a country and Africa is a continent. And language and ethnic politics aren't the largest issues here: its actual policy and governance. I don't see how language homogenization solved major problems in India other than the east (Nagaland, Assam) or how its democratic to even do this the way the French and English did in their nations to minority languages.

Is such a trade-off a good thing?

Especially if it doesn't even solve the problem.