Hari Mondal (Om Puri) is a poor farmer who lives in the remote Bengal village of Giripur in Birbhum district with his wife, two sons, brother, an old widowed aunt Kalidashi (Gita Sen) and her daughter Panchi.
Bibhutibhushan Ganguly (Victor Banerjee) is the young jotdar who has just lost his father and now wishes to employ new laws on his Borgadars ensuring his greatest profit while the poor farmer languishes in poverty.
Hari is naive and moulded under generations of servility and oppression to realise that his basic rights are being squandered, although his younger brother Bolai isn't happy remaining as mere servants to the landlord.
Over time, as the communist movement gets stronger in the region, Hari Mandal is oppressed under whims and fancies of the Jotdar, that include making him a paid labourer on his own plot of land and sacking his brother from working with him.
Meanwhile, the first leftist communist government is established in Bengal and after years of court battle and a Panchayat election where Hari defeats Karmakar to become the village Panch, he receives his Bargadari certificate—at the cost of a broken leg, a house, and a brother who is lost forever.