Calcutta: Pavan earns Rs 40 every day. He gets Rs 20 every week as pocket money, with which he buys potato crisps and other savouries, says a report by CRY, the child rights organisation. If Pavan had a little more money, he would have loved to get toys for himself. Any toy would do.

He is nine years old. He belongs to a Dalit family in Jagdishpura, Agra. He earns the money by working daily at a leather shoe-making factory a few kilometres from his home, where he works on the bases of shoes before the soles are stitched on, says the report.

Pavan's is exactly the kind of story that feeds into the world's idea of the horror of child labour in India, while remaining invisible to the country.

The CRY report, which comes ahead of June 12, World Day Against Child Labour, highlights several aspects of the shoe industry's employment of children in Agra and cites census 2011 data on the prevalence of child labour in the country.

Agra, most famous for Taj Mahal, is also noted for its leather shoes. The leather factories where the shoes are made employ mostly male children in large numbers as daily wage earners. The boys start going to the factories from the age of six or seven.

They don't go to school. By the time they are teenagers, many of them have picked up alcohol and gutka or tobacco in other forms as habits. Their working lives are often finished by the time they are in their 30s, because of the unsanitary conditions of their work and workplace and their lifestyle.

Vishal, another child from Agra employed in the shoe industry mentioned by CRY, is reported to think games aren't for him. Neither is school. He is 12.

Agra district reports unhealthy figures on child labour. Children in the 5-18 age group number 1,561,166. Among them 141,424, just over 9 per cent, are working children, says CRY.

This reflects the overall national figures. Among the 359,304,699 of the country's children in the 5 to 18 age group, 33,000,571 are employed, which amounts to about 9.2 per cent.

In Agra, the children work mostly in the smaller shoe factories or home-based units. The bigger export factories do not permit children to work.

Often, the mothers of these children work from home in the same industry. They do the hand-stitching on the shoes and are paid Rs 2.50 for every pair.

Uttar Pradesh tops the child labour chart, by far, in terms of absolute numbers, followed by Rajasthan and Bihar.