ENVIRONMENTAL impact assessment (EIA) now being de rigueur, almost every engineer with the slightest pretensions to familiarity with environment has jumped on the EIA bandwagon. One guestimate puts the total money changing hands in this fast-expanding business at Rs 400 crore.
The undisputed king of the EIA market is the Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI). Atul Kansal of Environmental Resources Management says NEERI accounts for as much as 40 per cent of the EIA market. NEERI's fees, which range from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 2 crore, reflect the clientele it attracts—TNCs, big Indian industries and public sector companies. But in recent times many EIAs made by NEERI have drawn flak from experts. Notably, the EIAs on the Reliance refinery in Jamnagar and on the impact of industrial pollution on Taj Mahal.
However, there are enough small fish in the EIA pond for the fly-by-night operator. If you want a comprehensive EIA done and you can't spare Rs 20-25 lakh, he is just the right guy for you. He will do the job for one-tenth the amount and, what's more, won't pester you for the money till the project is cleared. His lab: a PC. His apparatus: an EIA software and a miscellany of EIA reports of similar projects. An accomplished pastiche artist, he cleverly combines details from look alike projects to conjure up a plausible report.
Not difficult thus for an alert member to catch gross blunders. Sagardhara, an EIA consultant, cited two EIA reports, one from Bihar and another from Tamil Nadu, which talked of identical flora and fauna. Ashish Kothari once stumbled on an EIA report that put tigers where none exist now. "The poor guy had used data from a period when tigers did roam there. Obviously he had done his 'homework' but not his fieldwork," quips Kothari.