Nandalal est affecté au bureau de poste d’un petit village. Il reprend à son service Ratan, la petite fille orpheline qui servait de domestique au précédent chef de bureau. L’enfant s'attache à lui et Nandalal entreprend de lui apprendre à lire. Ratan se prend à espérer de cet homme un père de substitution. Elle prend soin de lui quand il contracte la malaria. Au village des musiciens l’accueillent chaleureusement et chantent pour lui. Mais après sa maladie, Nandalal qui ne s'est attaché ni à l'enfant ni au village, demande sa mutation. Au moment de son départ, Ratan pleure en secret et cache ses larmes. Elle se détourne quand elle le croise pour ne pas lui montrer sa peine.
The central character is the Post Master who is given a mysterious cheque for ₹500,000 to be given to anyone who will use it to benefit the people of the village. There is a postman who pretends to be lame and is secretly rich and may have sent the cheque. Then there is the postmaster's wife, who is sick and would rather use the money to cure her illness, and his beautiful daughter Seema (played by Sadhana), who has a crush on the village school master. Meanwhile all the greedy and influential people of the village are busy trying to convince everybody why they are most deserving of the money; they include the village priest, the land lord, the money lender, the village doctor and the school master, who is by far the most respected. They all decide democracy is the best means and decide to hold an election where the winner gets the money. The movie is a satirical look at democracy through various twists and turns in the plot, interweaved with a simple love story.
Sujata is a romance between a Brahmin young man, Adheer (Sunil Dutt) and an untouchable woman, Sujata (Nutan). The movie has Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's fight against untouchability and the myth of Chandalika in hinduism as its subtexts on the basis of which it tries to criticize the practice of untouchability in India.
Paresh Chandra Dutt, un employé de banque de Calcutta, trouve par terre une petite pierre ronde. Pensant qu’il s’agit d’une bille, il la donne à son neveu. Lorsqu’il s’aperçoit que la pierre a en réalité le pouvoir de changer tous les métaux en or, il la lui rachète en échange de bonbons, et transforme en or quelques vieux boulets de canon. Le voilà soudain riche.
Kanchan, all of eight years old is always up to pranks and mischief in his village home. He finds his father a cruel demon who keeps his mother oppressed and imprisoned. In his dreams, the big city is El Dorado, till he reaches there. But the glimpses of reality are harsher and the victims he meets give him a different view of the city. He himself has to struggle for survival and experiences life as it is, only to go back to his village home. This time as a mature person and with the realization that his father is no demon after all, but yet another victim struggling with poverty and still a loving father.
Ranchi (frontière du Bengale et du Bihar). Bimal, un chauffeur de taxi irascible et excentrique, entretient une relation quasi amoureuse avec sa vieille voiture déglinguée, une Chevrolet modèle 1920, qu'il a appelée Jagaddal, que l'on pourrait traduire du bengali par "Inamovible". Cette voiture n'est d'ailleurs pas semblable aux autres, elle peut être jalouse, surtout lorsque son conducteur veut porter secours à une jeune femme...
Un garçon de la campagne, Raj (Raj Kapoor), parti d'Allahabad, marche vers la grande ville de Bombay pour gagner sa vie. Il tombe amoureux de la pauvre mais vertueuse Vidya (Nargis), mais est rapidement séduit par la richesse sans entrave et contraire à l'éthique, qui lui sont présentées par un homme d'affaires sans scrupules et malhonnête, Seth Sonachand Dharmanand (Nemo) et la sulfureuse tentatrice Maya (Nadira). Il se met finalement au service de la tricheuse, ou « 420 », qui triche même dans les jeux de cartes. Vidya s'efforce de faire Raj un homme bon, mais échoue.
Preetam (Guru Dutt), a struggling cartoonist, meets Anita (Madhubala) at a tennis match, where she is watching her favorite tennis star. Anita, a wealthy and westernized heiress is controlled by her feminist aunt, Sita Devi (Lalita Pawar). Sita is suspicious of men, and cultivates her attitudes in Anita. However, to receive her fortune, her father's will decrees that Anita must marry within one month of turning 21. Sita Devi doesn't agree with this, and tries to set Anita up with a sham marriage which will soon lead to divorce, thereby giving her both freedom and a fortune. Sita hires Preetam to marry Anita, but doesn't know that the pair have already met. Preetam is kept from Anita after their marriage, but he kidnaps her and takes her to the traditional house of his brother.
Set against the backdrop of rural Bengal during feudal times, Devdas is a young man from a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family in India in the early 1900s. Paro alias Parvati is a young woman from a middle class Bengali Brahmin family, but belonging to a slightly lower status in terms of caste, affluence and status. The two families lived in a village, and Devdas and Paro were childhood friends.
Kalu is a migrant taxi-driver in Mumbai, He has two women who love him and would like to marry him. Kalu first wants to establish himself and become rich, before he can even think of marriage.
Ramu, a fresh graduate is searching for a job like many others in post-Partition Kolkata. The mother is yearnful of older times when the family used to live in a better house, but she bears her suffering quietly, for the most part. The father is myopic and full of cynicism for he does not share the idealistic aspirations of his two children that better times will come. The light of Ramu's life is his girlfriend Uma, who lives in an equally precarious situation with her sister Shephali and her mother. Jatin is an even poorer minor character living near Uma's dwelling who Ramu avoids because he cannot help the former out financially. To make ends meet, Ramu's mother takes in Sagar, a poor chemist, as a paying guest. Ramu does not get a job and cannot pay rent even with the meagre money that he gets from Sagar and is insulted by the landlord. Ultimately the family is evicted.
Devadasu, son of Ravulapalle zamindar Narayana Rao (S. V. Ranga Rao), and Parvati, daughter of his not-so-rich neighbour Neelakantham (Doraswamy) are childhood friends. The zamindar enrolls his son in a boarding school in the city. The grown-up Devadasu (Akkineni Nageswara Rao) returns to the village after his education. His childhood friendship with Parvati now turns into love.
The 16th century, the Malabar Coast. General Barbosa (KN Singh) signs a treaty with the queen (Sulochana) of a small state giving the Portuguese right to trade in exchange for military protection. With the help of the queen's nephew Jaswant (Ramsingh), he begins to meddle in the administration as well. He arrests merchant Ramzan Ali and his friend Narayan Das. Das' daughter Nisha (Geeta Bali) tries to save her father but is caught by Barbosa and both are sold to a cruel Portuguese pirate Cabral. Cabral kills Narayan Das. Nisha rouses her fellow slaves to revolt against Cabral and once Cabral is killed Nisha becomes a pirate queen pillaging all Portuguese ships in sight. One such ship includes heir to the throne Prince Ravi (Guru Dutt), a Portuguese woman Rosita (Kuldip Kaur) and a court astrologer (Johnny Walker). Nisha spares their lives as Ravi had saved her life earlier. They inevitably fall in love. Ravi joins the mutineers without revealing his identity. Back on shore, Ravi learns Jaswant is to be crowned king. Ravi is arrested and sentenced to death. Nisha saves him and they join forces with other local chiefs to defeat Barbosa.