2021 in pictures — Covid 2nd wave brings India to its knees, and Neeraj Chopra wins Olympic gold
Clashes erupted on Republic Day during a farmers' tractor rally in Delhi. Later in the year, the farmers’ protest ended with government repealing the farm laws.
A farmer holds a gun outside Red Fort on 26 January. The protesting farmers carried out a tractor rally to Red Fort on Republic Day. The protest took a violent turn that day amid clashes between police and protesters, but farmer unions distanced themselves from the violence | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint
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New Delhi: The year 2021 will be remembered as one of the most devastating in India’s recent history, what with the second Covid wave wreaking havoc on the country and leaving thousands of families grappling with grief.
Weeks before the second wave set in, a deluge in Uttarakhand — likely triggered by an avalanche — claimed dozens of lives.
But there was the rare moment of cheer too — like when Neeraj Chopra won an Olympic gold in javelin throw, a relatively unknown sport in the country.
Another big story of the year was the farmers’ protest, which ended in victory for the protesters as the government withdrew three controversial laws.
ThePrint photojournalists covered these events from close quarters. Here are a few of the pivotal moments of 2021, as captured by the lens of Suraj Singh Bisht and Manisha Mondal.
Remains of the Tapovan dam that was destroyed by flood water after an avalanche in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath in February | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintRescue workers emerge from a tunnel where several labourers got trapped after the Joshimath flood | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintA woman pays her last respects to a family member who passed away during the second Covid wave in May, at the Ghazipur crematorium in Delhi | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintSeveral pyres burn simultaneously at the Seemapuri crematorium in Delhi during the peak of the second wave, in May | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintA woman who lost her sister to Covid-19 grieves outside the LNJP Hospital in Delhi in June | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintA woman carries her child while balancing bowls of food on her head. A community kitchen in a West Bengal village provided food to tribals and migrant workers in June, when the country was battling the second Covid wave | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintWith no other place to quarantine, Shiva, a resident of Nalgonda district, Telangana, sits in his makeshift ‘Covid isolation ward’ — a mattress hoisted onto a tree — in May | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintIndian journalists pay tribute to Reuters’ chief photographer and Pulitzer-winner Danish Siddiqui, who was killed in Afghanistan while covering the clashes between security forces and the Taliban, in Delhi in July. Afghanistan fell to the Taliban almost exactly a month later | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintBlood drawn from an infant after a mysterious disease claimed the lives of many children in Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district in September | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintNeeraj Chopra shows off his gold medal at an event in Delhi, soon after the Tokyo Olympics | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintWomen offer prayers while surrounded by toxic foam floating on the Yamuna during Chhatt Puja, in Delhi in November | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintIndore was declared the country’s cleanest city for the fifth time in the Swachh Survekshan (cleanliness survey), 2021. In this photo, workers are seen segregating garbage from a dumping yard in November | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrintA farmer takes videos while police remove barricades from the Ghazipur border in December. Farmers vacated Delhi’s borders earlier this month, a year after they arrived there in protest, after the Modi government withdrew the three farm laws | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintPrime Minister Narendra Modi pays tribute to India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and others who lost their lives in an IAF helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu in December | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrintChief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat’s mortal remains arrive in New Delhi after the chopper crash. He and his wife were among 14 people killed in the crash | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint
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