Naya Daur is a story of two friends, Shankar (Dilip Kumar) a tongawala, and Krishna (Ajit) the wood-cutter, living in a happy and peaceful village. It is a story of how the two friends become foes due to a chain of events that start with, the both of them falling in love with the same girl, Rajni (Vyjantimala).

Naya Daur is a story of Kundan (Jeevan) a city-bred greedy son of the loval timber merchant who introduces new technology and machinery in an attempt to make quicker and bigger profits, with no regard for the lives of the local farming, tongawala, and the wood-cutters community.

From various incidents arise the emotional and economic conflicts that provide emotional upheavals and the moral of the film, that it is wrong to misuse the immense potentialities of the machine to create prosperity, by making it create money for the sake of a few, and generate unhappiness and misery for thousands.