In a small industrial town near Bombay lives Bholanath, who works at the local mill, and is the proud husband of Gauri, a daughter, Champa, and above all his son, Ramaiya, who is a graduate in the arts faculty—the only one in this town who has attained this degree. But times are hard, and jobs are difficult to come by. When Bholanath loses his job, Ramaiya decides to find employment, and does so as a menial worker in the same mill his dad used to work. Ramaiya is very popular with his co-workers and they soon elect him as their new union leader. This puts Ramaiya in conflict with the Management of the Mill, headed by the owner, Kapoor, who has ordered that Ramaiya be eliminated post haste. But Ramaiya is determined to address the workers' grievances, and he gets himself framed for theft; has the police on the lookout for him, and so Ramaiya goes into hiding. When Ramaiya does not show up for a workers' meeting, some believe that he has been bought by the mill management, and they decide to take the matters into their own hands—by burning the mill down, killing Kapoor and his family, and getting into direct confrontation with the local police, who have been issued orders to shoot-at-sight. The original end, where Ramaiya was supposed to die along with Geeta, taking bullet from the leader of the agitation, but the response from the viewers forced the ending to be a happier one. In the end, both survive and the mill restarts.