Shiv Khera

Biography

Shiv Khera is an Indian author, activist, and motivational speaker, best known for his book, You Can Win. He launched a movement against caste-based reservations in India and founded an organization called Country First Foundation.

Khera was born into a business-oriented family that operated coal mines, which were eventually nationalized by the Indian government. In his early years, he worked as a car washer, a life insurance agent, and a franchise operator before becoming a motivational speaker.

While working in the United States, he was inspired by a lecture delivered by Norman Vincent Peale and claims to follow Peale's motivational teachings.

When Freedom Is Not Free was published, Amrit Lal, a retired Indian civil servant, accused Khera of plagiarism, alleging that content from that book directly came from his own book India Enough Is Enough, published 8 years earlier.

Additionally, he found that numerous anecdotes, jokes, and quotes in Khera's other books were also used without acknowledging proper sources. Khera countered that he took notes and inspirations from numerous sources and that he was unable to keep track of all of them.

Lal finally accepted an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum of money (reputed to be 25 lacks according to Khera), which he said he would donate to the Missionaries of Charity.