Ashok goes to a village, mobilizes the peasants, fights the oppression of the village head-man and achieves bumper crops. Childhood friend Ajoy goes to England to study mining technology and is determined to make a success of a mining project in the rural area where Ashok is working. Each has radically different ideas about what is best for an independent nation. Ajoy`s sister Protibha, who loves Ashok, secretly finances Ajoy`s rural modernization endeavors. Ajoy, unaware of this, falls in love with Gauri, daughter of the social outcast Kunja. When Ajoy returns from England, he discovers that the best coal-fields lie directly beneath Ashok`s land. The crisis is manifested in a drought that threatens to destroy Ashok`s work and prove Ajoy`s contentions right.