The Congress has “clearly failed” to communicate with the people about its achievements, the party’s key advisor Sam Pitroda said Wednesday.

“The Congress party clearly has failed to communicate with the people on its achievements. For eight years, we gave over eight percent average economic growth, transformed education… it was not an easy job, certainly it was great but we lost the message,” Pitroda told IANS.

Pitroda, advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party vice president Rahul Gandhi, also said corruption exists in society but not in the Congress party.

He said the overall development in the country in the last decade may be one of the causes of the alleged corruption in the society.

“We were all honest and hated corruption till we were living in villages. Corruption increased with our ambitions and demands,” he said.

“There were no allegation of corruption on Congress leaders after independence or during Gandhiji’s time. Things changed by time,” he said.

“There were corruption charges framed by media and political leaders on then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on his alleged involvement in the Bofors gun deal. But what happened, Rajiv’s government was changed but nothing came out from the framed charges.”

He admitted that the steps taken by the Congress to fight corruption came too late and were too little.

But Rahul Gandhi is focussed on reaching out to the common people and selecting candidates with “clean image” for the Lok Sabha polls, he said.

  achievements, Congress, Pitroda