When you have planted a thousand saplings, protecting them from the harsh winter cold is a priority. While the native wild forest trees are quite hardy and don't need special care, the hybrid fruit trees are less resilient, and need to be kept warm, lest they perish.
The local way of doing this is to make little tents with straw harvest from the previous kharif crop, namely Rice. This straw is available in abundance in Haryana/ Punjab, where farmers often burn their fields and the straw during winter leading to pollution woes in nearby cities. You can see in the photo below, that our neighboring farmer has a stack of this hay piled up.
The locals are pretty good at making these tents. Its really just a bundle of straw placed over the young saplings and tied together at the top.