Previous Year Question

Vishti meant compulsory or forced labour. A person discharged an obligation towards the State through labour. It was therefore not ordinary work performed for regular wages but a labour obligation comparable to taxation. Available reproductions of the original 2019 question also record Option A in precisely this sense.

Option A is correct. Under Gupta and contemporary land-grant arrangements, the right to obtain labour increasingly became an important economic right along with revenue and other privileges. Vishti can therefore be understood as a State resource or a form of tax in labour. Historians regard the transfer of revenue and administrative rights through Gupta-period and later land grants as an important transformation in the economic structure of the State.

Option B is incorrect. There is substantial inscriptional evidence for land grants and transfer of royal rights in central and western India; therefore, Vishti cannot be regarded as completely absent from these regions. R. S. Sharma also associates Gupta-period grants with the gradual transfer of taxation, administrative powers and forced-labour rights.

Option C is incorrect. The defining feature of Vishti was that it was a compulsory labour obligation, not ordinary wage labour. Thus, an entitlement to weekly wages does not fit its character.

Option D is also incorrect. There is no established general rule that only the eldest son of a labourer had to perform Vishti. The obligation involved supplying labour from the household or local population rather than necessarily sending the eldest son.

Vishti → compulsory labour → generally unpaid → tax-like obligation to the State