 Ashok (Saigal) goes to a village, mobilises the peasants, fights the oppression of the village head-man and achieves bumper crops. Childhood friend Ajoy (Sethi) 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 (Kumari), who loves Ashok, secretly finances Ajoy s rural modernization endeavours. Ajoy, unaware of this, falls in love with Gauri (Umasashi), daughter of the social outcaste Kunja (Dey). 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.