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"I've always felt having so many languages has hurt India more." - why? Many languages are dying in India and that's just sad - every language lost erodes identities, stories, and diversity. However, more and more people are moving to 'link languages' like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali etc. The challenge is to ensure all local language users are treated equal in India

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> very language lost erodes identities, stories, and diversity.

But they're lost because they've outlived their usefulness. Language is about communication. A language with which you can only communicate with a tiny minority of the humans on the planet is nowhere near as useful as a global one.

I'm not sure how I feel about linguists and historians who want to preserve a language in place. This gives them joy, but handicaps the children who have to allocate limited resources to learning a language that is pretty much useless outside of their villages or districts. You basically handicap children who were already born into poverty just so you can say you preserved a language.

You're not wrong about the economic utility of certain languages. However, every language lost is a tragedy. This obituary explains it better than I could.

Marie Smith, last speaker of the Eyak language. http://www.economist.com/node/10640514

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