Here's Rahul Gandhi's frank admission on how BJP helped him with its constant criticism

NEW DELHI: Is plain-speaking Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's new strategy?

It appears that way, going by his recent candid comments on himself and his party.

His latest such admission came yesterday: "Meri pitai kar-kar ke unhone meri aankhen khol di," said Rahul in Gujarat yesterday, referring to the BJP.

Translation: "Their (BJP's) constant verbal bashing of me has opened my eyes and taught me."

There's more.

Here's what the Congress vice president said yesterday on the 2014 Lok Sabha polls:

"BJP ne meri bahut madad ki,2014 polls jo hum haare usse faaydemand cheez nahi ho sakti." Translation: "The BJP helped me a lot, losing the 2014 elections proved to be very useful for us (Congress)."

Not long ago, in an address and Q&A session at the University of California in Berkeley, Rahul acknowledged that the Congress lost the last general election because it had become "arrogant" and lost touch with the people.

"Somewhere around 2012, and I say this, a certain arrogance crept into the Congress party. And they stopped having that conversation," said Rahul in the Berkeley interaction last month where he dropped several such bombshells.

Another reason for the 2014 loss, he said, was that the Congress party's 10-year strategy - laid out in 2004 - had run out of steam.

"The vision that we laid out in 2004 was designed at best for a 10-year period. And it was pretty clear that the vision that we laid out in 2004 by the time we arrived in 2010-11 was not working anymore," said the 47-year-old leader at Berkeley.

Similarly, yesterday, in an interaction with members of the business community in Gujarat, he acknowledged that the Congress could have done a lot better in the areas of generating jobs and in promoting small and medium businesses.

"Our record was better than theirs (the BJP government's), but even our record was 5 on 10," he said, adding that job creation is India's biggest challenge today.

Read this story in Gujarati

The Congress leader also said that 30,000 young men and women come into the job market every day in India, but the government is able to give employment to only 450 of them. By comparison, China's government is able to give jobs to as many as 50,000 people a day.

Speaking more about the economy, Rahul criticised the government, saying it only favours big business and doesn't strengthen small and medium businesses.

"Ye BJP extreme karti hai,Congress ko bhi jis tarah karna tha nahi kia. Humari galti maanta hoon (The BJP had gone to extremes, but even the Congress government didn't encourage as much as it should have. I acknowledge our mistake)," said Rahul.

The Congress leader is on a campaign tour of Gujarat which goes to the polls later this year.