Week in Review: May 31-June 6

India has the world's \"greenest\" consumers.

After revising their predictions for the arrival of the monsoons because of Cyclone Phet, the Met Department finally settled on June 12 as a possible start date. The BMC cancelled leave, including emergency leave, for all employees until the end of the rains. “Every department of the BMC has been put on monsoon duty,” civic chief Swadhin Kshatriya said.

It was revealed that the Queen would not attend the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in October because of  ”the volume of engagements, coupled with other overseas commitments”. Queen Elizabeth II, who sought a pay raise of £6.4million for carrying out her civic duties which include attending functions, has been to every Commonwealth Game during her reign except for the one held in 1966. President Obama said he was “delighted” to announce his visit to India in early November.

A Civil Services survey found that 33 per cent of government officers have considered quitting their job, while another 33 per cent of the 4,800 polled, felt that babus did not respect other people’s time and convenience. “I expected it to be worse,” a senior official said. A study found that India had the most inefficient bureaucracy of 12 countries surveyed, “mainly because the civil service is a power centre in its own right.”

After issuing repeated denials that they weren’t involved in bidding for the IPL franchise in Pune,  it was found that Union minister Sharad Pawar and his daughter MP Supriya Sule had a 16 per cent stake in the company that bid for the team. Pawar had said that had he been involved in the bidding process, the company would not have lost the bid. A 13-year-old boy from Bandra got a perfect score in the maths section of the SAT, an admissions test meant for US-bound 15-year-olds. MNS workers “roughed up” the principal of NM College in Vile Parle for suspending students for poor attendance.

The BMC sought Rs100 crore for the maintenance of three machines bought to repair pot holes. A couple fleeced 188 people in Mumbai of Rs1.5 crore promising them employment at the Snow White Laundry in the UK. St.Xavier’s College became the first Mumbai university to be granted academic autonomy. The police concluded that the shots fired at guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, thought to be an assassination attempt, were really meant to scare off stray dogs at his ashram outside Bangalore. ”I suggest Karan Johar make a movie titled ‘I am Swamy, But I am Innocent’,” Shankar said.

Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the 26/11 terrorist attacks, has challenged his sentencing of death by hanging. The Indian consumer was found to be the world’s most eco-friendly in a 17 nation-survey, which ranked the US ranked last. Mumbai was found to have the highest number of “green” buildings in the country, and the city was looking into a 150-year-old waste disposal system involving lidless trains to help with the removal of 6,500 tonnes of waste generated every day.