The salesman asks one question before he reaches for a box: Bata size kitna hai? You say seven or eight, he measures nothing, and you walk out with a shoe chosen entirely on length. By the end of the first long day the sides of your feet know exactly what got skipped.
Most office shoes sold in India are built to fit a foot that is not quite yours. The sizing habit treats length as the whole story, when width is where the trouble lives. For anyone who stands, walks and commutes through a working day, that gap is the difference between shoes you forget about and shoes you count the hours in.
Indian feet are a different shape
The research on this is clear, and it comes from the people who study it. The Central Leather Research Institute in Chennai has long pointed out that Indian feet are broader at the forefoot than European feet.
We have a broader front area when compared to the European feet.
M. Sreeram of CLRI, speaking to The Week
The sizing systems most brands use were never built for that shape. As the same report explains, neither UK nor US sizing accounts for a wider width on Indian feet. They scale length up and down and assume width follows in a fixed ratio. For a broad forefoot it does not, which is why two people with the same length foot can need quite different shoes.
The lasts make it worse. A last is the foot shaped mould a shoe is built around, and most formal shoes here are built on imported European lasts. An industry account notes that footwear built on European lasts does not properly fit Indian feet, because the forepart, around the ball and the waist of the foot, runs wider on us. So the shoe is the wrong shape before it is ever the wrong size. You can buy your exact length and still be squeezed, because the mould underneath assumes a narrower foot than the one you are standing on.
The Bata size trap
The habit runs deep because it is quick. One number, one box, done. But width, not length, is what decides whether a shoe is comfortable at hour ten. A shoe that is right in length but tight across the ball pinches with every step, and on a commute, a Metro platform, a connecting bus and the walk at either end, those steps add up to a bad day, and over months to the calluses and bent toes that tight shoes leave behind.
The symptoms are familiar to anyone who has worn the wrong width. A burning line along the outside edge of the foot. Numbness in the smaller toes. Shoes that feel fine for the first hour and turn into a vice by lunch. None of that is your foot being difficult. It is a shoe shaped for someone else.
How to check the fit
Buy shoes in the evening, when your feet have swelled to their largest after a day of standing. Wear the socks you will have on at work, not thin ankle socks, since a thicker sock changes the fit across the ball. Stand up in both, and walk a few steps. The ball of your foot, the widest part, should sit in the widest part of the shoe, with no bulge pushing against the leather on either side. Your toes should have room to wiggle, and the shoe should flex where your foot flexes, not halfway down its length. If you use orthotic insoles, carry them to the store and try the shoe with them in, because an insole eats width you cannot see on the shelf.
Look for brands and ranges that state a width, not only a size, and favour shoes with a rounder, fuller toe box over sharply tapered ones. A rounder toe gives a broad forefoot somewhere to go. Leather, real leather, helps too, because it gives a little and moulds to your foot over a few wears in a way a stiff synthetic upper never will. What leather cannot do is fix a last that is the wrong shape, so start with width and shape, and treat breaking in as a finishing touch, not a rescue.
Buying online makes the width problem harder, not easier, because you cannot stand and walk before you commit. If you order, measure the widest part of your foot with a tape, in the evening, and check it against the brand's own width chart rather than trusting your usual size. Order two widths if the seller allows free returns, keep the one your foot sits flat in, and send the other back. A shoe that arrives a touch long is a minor annoyance. One that arrives too narrow is a month of sore feet or a return you keep putting off.
| Part of the foot | A European last assumes | Many Indian feet are |
|---|---|---|
| Forefoot width | Narrow | Broader across the toes |
| Ball | Snug | Wider, needs room to splay |
| Waist, the midfoot | Trim | Fuller |
| Toe shape | Often tapered or square | Often longest at the big toe |
The data is starting to catch up
There is a reason sizing has been guesswork for so long. A 2024 pilot study noted that there is still no accurate database of Indian feet for the country's footwear industry, which means brands have been scaling foreign measurements rather than measuring us.
That is changing. CLRI has been running a national foot survey, measuring around one lakh people to build a Footwear Sizing System of India, with Sreeram saying they will now account for both width and length. Early work is filling in shape too. A 2025 pilot study found that most Indian men's feet are Egyptian in shape, longest at the big toe, around 53 per cent against 47 per cent square, which argues for a rounder toe box over a sharp point. Treat those two as early readings rather than settled numbers, but the direction fits what your own feet have been telling you.
A shoe engineered around the Indian forefoot, wider at the ball, rounder at the toe, true in length, is not a luxury. For anyone standing and walking through a working day, it is the difference between footwear you notice and footwear you forget. Once a national sizing system lands, buying for width may finally be as easy as reading a number off a box. Until then, the trial room and your own two feet are the test that matters.