Title: India farmers protests: Thousands swarm Delhi against deregulation rules - CNN
Headings: Tens of thousands of farmers swarm India's capital to protest deregulation rules
Tens of thousands of farmers swarm India's capital to protest deregulation rules
What the protests are about
Why it's such a hot political issue

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According to Ashutosh Mishra, the media coordinator of protest organizer All India Kisan Sangharsh Committee, which represents around 200 farming unions, tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered at each of New Delhi's three borders -- a line of protesters at one of the borders stretches for 30 kilometers (19 miles), he said. Police have put up barriers and dug up roads to prevent protesters from coming into the city center to hold sit-ins. Mishra expects more farmers from around the country to join the protests in the coming days. That's despite New Delhi being a hotspot for Covid-19 in a country that has already reported more than 9.4 million reported cases, the most in any country bar the United States. "We are trying to be weary of Covid but we don't have an option -- it is a question of life and death," said Mukut Singh, the president of a farmers union in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, who is leading thousands in protest in his home state, and says he will join the protesters in Delhi later this week. "We are the ones who have provided food, milk, vegetables when the whole country was in lockdown -- we were still toiling in the fields," he said. " It is the government who has put us at risk by introducing these laws during Covid." What the protests are about
For decades, the Indian government has offered guaranteed prices to farmers for certain crops, providing long-term certainty that allows them to make investments for the next crop cycle. Under the previous laws, farmers had to sell their goods at auction at their state's Agricultural Produce Market Committee, where they were guaranteed to get at least the government-agreed minimum price. There were restrictions on who could purchase at auction and prices were capped for essential commodities.