Cong’s new website celebrates Rahul, no sign of Sonia

It might seem like dark days for the Congress these days but the party need not despair. The son is finally rising.

The newly revamped and snazzy Congress website is all about Rahul, Rahul and more Rahul Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi might still be the party's chief but the virtual baton has been passed on to her son. S Prasannarajan writes in India Today that Rahul's attempt to remake the Congress "represents the pledge of the son to redeem the party withering away in the shadow of the mother." The new website certainly reflects that.

"The home page is about Rahul every inch of the way the way, carrying his speeches, quotes and nine photographs while Sonia finds no mention," writes Sanjay K Jha in The Telegraph. There's Rahul talking to FICCI. There's Rahul addressing a press conference. There's Rahul opining about the Lok Pal bill. And there's Shri Gandhi sharing in the "In Focus" section a poignant story about his secular dream.

Screenshot from the new Congress site

"I met a boy at the relief camp in Shamli. He was crying. When I asked him why he was crying, he said he was afraid…No person of any community, caste or region should ever be scared in India. This is a secular country".

The usual holy trinity – Nehru, Indira and Rajiv – are tucked away in the "Our Inspiration" corner. Sonia however has to be searched for. She's under "Organisation" as if listing the board of directors of some NGO. Most surprisingly for a party as propelled by dynasty power as the Congress, the largest pictures on the front page are not of any of its usual icons other than the Mahatma at his spinning wheel. Apart from him it's all smiling children in a classroom, jubilant college graduates tossing their caps in the air and cheering women at a Congress rally. Mahatma is spinning his khadi but the Congress is trying to spin a different story about a more modern party – one that embraces hope, merit and empowerment.

But the Congress' new website also acknowledges the twin threats posed by both the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party to the Congress even its spokespersons try to exude a blasé confidence.

The Congress rattled by Modi's vikaas for all mantra has expanded on it. So according to the website it's the party with a "Voice FOR ALL", "Empowerment FOR ALL" and "Opportunity FOR ALL."

The impact of the Aam Aadmi Party's grassroots success is also clear. Jha writes "The previous website didn't have the donation facility, which may have been inspired by the success of the Aam Aadmi Party, which has generated sizeable funds online. The Congress website allows donations through cheques and takes care to mention that these are exempt from income tax."

In an odd twist the main slide show on the Congress website has fewer pictures of the party's leadership.

In contrast the Aam Aadmi Party squeezes in four pictures of Arvind Kejriwal in three slides. The only slide that does not have his picture has his name.

The BJP has its Rajnath Singh-LK.Advani-Atal Behari Vajpayee troika front and centre on its main slide show alongside its platform planks of Good Governance, Cultural Nationalism, Development, Antyodaya and Security.

The BJP might have a roadmap to the nation's future but the navigation is hopelessly tangled on its website. Security leads nowhere. Development leads to a page that's all about Cultural Nationalism. Antyodaya is a dead end. Narendra Modi is coyly played down on the front page so that in the virtual BJP it's as if the great Advani-Modi power struggle never happened. There's just a link to Modi's website and a picture of Modi hugging Rajanth Singh as they invite voters to Join Mission 272+.

The Congress website is clean and well-organized, with big images. It's actually a far more professional, 21st century website than the old clunker which was just a laundry basket for speeches by Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. The Congress has a far tougher task for its website designers than the Aam Aadmi Party. It has to brag about its long history without being dragged down by it. The Aam Aadmi Party having little to no history at all has a barebones front page – images, latest news, and ways to become involved with it.

The Congress has to defend its record, tout the new land acquisition law and claim to be committed to eliminating corruption. But it has decided to look ahead instead of cluttering its front page with a who's who of the Independence Movement. Those worthies are all enshrined in Our Inspiration. But "our inspiration" is no longer front and centre on the website.

The Congress is trying to reinvent itself to be a party that's more about vision and policy than a First Family. The website matches that makeover. That might be in keeping with Rahul Gandhi's self-image these days as the party's conscience.

But as MJ Akbar points out in The Times of India, the problem with Rahul's "blue blood warrior against sleaze" persona is he keeps reversing decisions made by his own party. But it's a hard act to sell the electorate after ten years in power, marked by scams aplenty writes Akbar. "One can almost hear that old Urdu proverb being repeated across the northern states: Nau sau chuhe khaake billi Haj pe chali (After eating 990 mice, the cat is going on Haj.)"

A clean web interface is sadly nowhere close to a clean party.

AAP rally in Amethi will challenge Rahul, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty across India

A day after it emerged that the Aam Aadmi Party's commanders in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar hope, at least as of now, to field candidates from all 80 and 40 Lok Sabha seats respectively, the AAP is set to kick off its Parliamentary election campaign in the most critical state of Uttar Pradesh with a rally in Amethi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's constituency.

AAP leader Kumar Vishwas has already declared his own candidature from Amethi, or from any other seat that Rahul Gandhi contests from.

AAP leader Kumar Vishwas. Image courtesy ibnlive

The rally, AAP's first after the Delhi elections, will be held on 12 January and will focus on two things -- calling the bluff of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress on secularism in riot-hit Uttar Pradesh and on citizen's direct participation in governance, called 'Swaraj'.

The rally will be held around the same time that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will be finalising the Swaraj Bill he has announced will be tabled in the Delhi Legislative Assembly.

According to a report in The Times of India, the 'Jan Vishwas Rally' will be held just days before the last date for applications to the party for Lok Sabha elections

Needless to say, the Amethi rally signals the AAP's intent to make the issue of dynasty politics part of their election agenda in Uttar Pradesh.

Even beyond Amethi, AAP is catching people's attention in in India's largest state with names of likely candidates from prominent constituencies such as Allahabad and Lucknow including names such as lawyer Prashant Bhushan, academician Sudhir Panwar, a retired engineer and others.

PTI reported that preparations have begun for the 12 January rally in which Kumar Vishwas will participate.

Local district convener of AAP, Hanuman Singh, reportedly said that youth will participate in large numbers in the rally.

He claimed that the AAP rally will mark the beginning of the end of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty politics.

 

Why AAP’s pro reservation stance could help it in Lok Sabha elections

As the Aam Aadmi Party gears up for the Lok Sabha elections, the party's senior leader Yogendra Yadav has been quoted as saying that it will seek more quota for lower castes and women.

According to an Economic Times report, Yadav told the paper that, "We (AAP) didn't have clarity about it until recently. However, we are now clear about it. We will work for more reservation for disadvantaged groups. Discrimination on the basis of caste is extreme in India. Equally bad is discrimination based on gender and class. We will work towards the welfare of all groups that are victim to such discrimination."

PTI

Earlier Yadav had told Firstpost that "We don't want to do politics the way it's being practiced. Issues of social injustice have to be addressed in a new way. That's where the creativity and crafting of the politics lie."

Even as Yadav talks of a stronger push for reservations now, it would be fair to say that AAP has never actually shied away from having a stance on the issue of reservations. The party's vision plan touches on the issue right at the start. Under the chapter titled "Creation of a just and equal society free of prejudice and oppression," it points out the reservation can't be done away with. It reads,

The reservation system was introduced to resolve the issue of social inequality. We believe that at this point, reservation is essential for the advancement of the deprived and marginalized section of the society. At the same time it is essential that the benefits of reservation reach to those who are most needy even amongst this lot. Reservation should not be an option for those who have already benefited from it and are now financially prosperous.

These should be for socially and economically weaker sections only… However, we have to reconsider and think if only reservations are enough to ensure progress among the backward segments of society? 

Experts feel that from a policy level, AAP's pro-reservation stance might help them.

Pradip Kumar Dutta, Professor Political Science from Delhi University, told Firstpost that where reservation and AAP are concerned, "From a policy perspective, it could be helpful for them. Policies that economically and socially empower disadvantaged sections without incurring a greater proportion of reservations for government jobs and education would be helpful for the AAP.

He adds, "It also needs to be remembered that a lot of the poor are from backward castes, given the years of discrimination."

Why BJP is celebrating Prashant Bhushan’s Kashmir blunder

Is the Congress making a terrible miscalculation by hoping that Arvind Kejriwal's rise will hit the campaign of BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi? There seems to be a clear gap between the top leadership of the party and the rank and file on the issue.

The latter feel that the AAP's phenomenal rise in positive perception is inimical to the ruling party's interests in the coming parliamentary elections. However, the senior leaders believe that in urban constituencies the new party will eat into the anti-incumbency votes that would otherwise could go to the BJP or Modi, and thereby minimise the losses of the ruling party.

The party clearly has not learnt any lessons from the Delhi election results. The reason the Congress landed up with just eight seats, after securing a two-third majority in the Delhi assembly in successive elections, was due to increased competition between its two challengers, the BJP and AAP. It is now an open secret that the Congress virtually bent over backwards to give Arvind Kejriwal support, despite his harsh words about the party and its leadership, in order to curtail the BJP's prospects in the event the Delhi assembly elections were held around the time of the Parliamentary elections.

The rise of the AAP has the BJP worried. PTI

The performance of newly appointed Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely during Kejriwal's trust vote was telling. Lovely didn't seem to be downcast over his party's complete decimation in the elections and being forced to play a subservient role. Instead in his half-hour-long speech, he spoke of the irony that the BJP couldn't come to power despite being the single largest party in the assembly. Many see his stance as an indicator of how Congress was shaping its policy for the upcoming general elections.

The BJP's leadership and cadre are worried about the rise of AAP and the kind of attention that it has been getting since the Congress decided to support it to form a government in Delhi. The party is now trying to reformulate its electoral strategy and is also waiting for AAP to slip up.

Senior AAP leader Prashant Bhushan's statement seeking a referendum in Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian Army's continued presence in Kashmir was perhaps the first real opportunity. The most articulate and urbane face of the BJP, Arun Jaitley went ballistic about it and other leaders also joined in.

The AAP also suffered some embarassment when its young Women and Child Welfare Minister, Rakhi Birla, pressurised cops to lodge and FIR and alleged a conspiracy by unidentified persons when the windshield of her car was accidentally broken by a child playing cricket. The child's family had claimed that they had apologised to the minister on the spot.

And then came another contentious demand for hiking the quota for disadvantaged social groups from senior AAP leader Yogendra Yadav. Though other political parties would not comment on the issue for obvious reasons, it has sparked off a raging debate on social media. Interestingly, a substantive section of young AAP supporters and sympathisers are firm believers in abolishing such quotas.

Incidents like these do cast some doubts about the AAP's thought process and ability to provide a long term governance model, but they would still be considered too trivial to adversely impact the party's rise.

The AAP's decision to go national and talk about Arvind Kejriwal running for PM, though he has denied any plans to contest parliamentary elections, has made the run up to the elections even more interesting. There is a feeling among leaders of some political parties, most prominently the BJP, that the Congress knew that 2014 elections was a lost case for it. The party was routed in last month's assembly elections in four north Indian states and could well predict its fate in the parliamentary polls. It was therefore focussed not so much about winning a third term at the centre, but to minimise the scale of its defeat and prevent Modi's victory to a level which might find potential allies gravitating towards the BJP.

However, the Congress leadership is perhaps discounting the fact that though AAP is gaining ground in the middle class, and also in a section of youth, which otherwise was presumed to be a solid Modi constituency, it is making deeper inroads in Congress's social constituency of urban poor.

The Muslim community too is weighing AAP rise with great deal of curiosity. The Congress has so far been banking on the fact that the Muslim community would be against Modi and would therefore cast their votes in in their favour.

Though the AAP's case is slightly different from its predecessors, the Congress leadership in the past has experimented by nurturing splinter groups and new political outfits to contain its rival's prospects and boost its own. It has been successful in some experiments and failed it others.

Telugu super star Chiranjeevi forming a new party ahead of Andhra Pradesh state elections served as a boon to the Congress as it cut into the anti-incumbency votes, which could have otherwise gone to the TDP. The actor has since then joined the Congress and is the tourism minister in UPA 2.

It is widely speculated that the Congress and NCP supported Raj Thackeray's ambitions and provided his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena the support to stand against the Shiv Sena. The split in the Shiv Sena's traditional support base has hurt the BJP-Shiv Sena combine's chances of winning for the last two assembly polls.

But in two other instances, in Punjab and in Gujarat, its flirtation with Manpreet Badal and Keshubhai Patel failed to have any popular impact. In the last Gujarat elections it was known to all and sundry that dissident Keshubhai Patel's GPP was fighting a proxy battle for the Congress. The party had banked heavily on Kehubhai's influence in the Saurashtra region to try and undermine Modi campaign for a third term, but it failed miserably.

Senior BJP leaders are of the opinion that since Modi had already gained a lot of traction among the electorate and created a buzz even in rural areas, it would be very difficult, if not impossible to undermine his campaign.

A close Modi aide said the BJP had already gained such a large lead that the AAP would not be able to play spoiler even if ate into Modi's support base. He cited the example of Delhi, where many in the party believe that if the party had announced Harsh Vardhan's name as its chief ministerial candidate well in advance, rather than just a month ahead of the actual date of polling, the results would have been different. Modi has also already completed his first round of campaigning in almost all states before rivals could even start contemplating it.

The BJP is no longer taking AAP lightly and is consistently trying to highlight AAP's mistakes, big or small. A case in point is the Prashant Bhushans' statement on a referendum in Kashmir. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley has equated that with separatist anti-national stance.

"It is regrettable that for a party like the Aam Aadmi Party which nourishes national ambitions, should adopt a position hostile to India's interests. The issues of national security cannot be decided by populism or referendum. They can only be decided on security considerations," he said in a statement.

However, for now, the Congress can take heart from one fact. Kewjriwal is making bigger headlines than Modi. The BJP is hoping that the coverage of the AAP's will reduce after it reaches saturation at some point.

Prashant Bhushan’s J&K slip: AAP can’t afford a Digvijaya-like PR debacle

From the Gandhi topis to the profuse use of the words 'aam aadmi' in every sentence they utter, Arvind Kejriwal's AAP leaders have laboriously tried to sound like carbon copies of each other in its short existence. However, with the party coming to power in Delhi, slowly, it is starting to sound more like a political party, as opposed to a students' movement where every participant says the same things in shrill, fervent tones. Given that the power dynamics of the party were fraught with problems right at its inception, it was just a matter of time before differences in opinions started surfacing. When Arvind Kejriwal and his band of supporters moved away from the power centre that was Anna Hazare in the anti-corruption stir, the founding leaders of the AAP came across as one nucleus, out to chart its own course.

And soon after, possibly because Kejriwal was the relentless voice of them all and was also more visible to people thanks to his fasting stint with Anna, he emerged as the most recognised, media-savvy leader who could be the face of the Aam Aadmi Party. However, while Kejriwal's role in the party can not be undermined, it is true that the logistics of running a political party demands physical and intellectual inputs from more than just one person. While Kejriwal has never visibly tried to eclipse the public life of most of his close coterie of leaders, the latter have always routinely echoed what he had had to say on most issues. Except for Prashant Bhushan.

Prashant Bhushan. Reuters.

A Supreme Court lawyer by profession, Bhushan was actively involved in the foundation building exercises of the AAP. One will recollect when AAP, led by Kejriwal, went on an 'expose' spree to herald its entry into politics, Bhushan was almost always the one fielding questions from the media alongside Kejriwal. From details about Nitin Gadkari's Purti Group to Robert Vadra's land deals, Bhushan was a prominent presence in all the public announcements of the AAP in its nascent stages. From giving out details of alleged scams, to appearing in television shows to counter the political bigwigs ranting about a new kid on the block, to following up the issues, Bhushan was the face of the AAP's activism days. In fact, the continuous string of exposes by the party led the Congress and BJP to turn the heat on Bhushan and accuse him of indulging in a shady land deal in his hometown in Himachal Pradesh.

However, with the party's upward swing in the political landscape of the country, Bhushan, a member of the national executive of the party, seemed to take a step back from the limelight. Around the same time, some of his opinions on important national issues, failed to resonate with the rest of the party.

Right after the elections, while speculations were rife that AAP will seek the support of either the Congress or the BJP, AAP leaders put up a stoic face and went on a rumour rejection trip. However, it was reported that Bhushan had told the media that if the BJP meets AAP's conditions, the party was willing to support BJP. As the news leaked out, Arvind Kejriwal immediately announced that he didn't endorse Bhushan's view. In fact, he dismissed what Bhushan said that the latter's personal opinion. More recently, Bhushan declared that there should be a referendum on the Kashmir issue. As the BJP pounced on the opportunity declaring Bhushan anti-national, Kejriwal, once again distanced himself from the comment conveying that Bhushan's view was not essentially the party's view.

While it is completely understandable if two members of a political party have conflicting views on the same subject, the problem with AAP is, unlike say a Congress, it cannot afford to have a leader on the lines of Digvijaya Singh, whose hurried comments the party is left covering up for. It is possibly true that leaders expressing contrary opinions within a party helps a party, especially a young one like AAP, develop its politics and deepen its impact. At the same time, however, the party can't falter on its public relations strategies. In fact, it is no short of surprising that a party like AAP, with a strong social media back-up has had to face up to public relations faux pas like the recent Kejriwal, Bhushan disagreement.

Because like the BJP made evident this time, any small difference in opinion within the AAP will be played up by the Opposition to hint at an unstable party and hence an equally unreliable government. With the AAP facing a fair share of apprehension about its policies and its efficacy, it is probably better advised to decide on a bunch of spokerpersons who speak to the media after an internal consultation.

It is important to note here that following the AAP's win, while leaders like Yogendra Yadav have been constantly seen making media appearances, with members like Kumar Vishwas stepping in, in his absence, Bhushan seems to be on a media hiatus. With the odds facing the AAP stacking up, it is probably high time the AAP come up with a strong public relations policy that will save the party further embarrassment.

 

Why the BJP is celebrating Prashant Bhushan’s J&K stumble

Is the Congress making a terrible miscalculation by hoping that Arvind Kejriwal's rise will hit the campaign of BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi? There seems to be a clear gap between the top leadership of the party and the rank and file on the issue.

The latter feel that the AAP's phenomenal rise in positive perception is inimical to the ruling party's interests in the coming parliamentary elections. However, the senior leaders believe that in urban constituencies the new party will eat into the anti-incumbency votes that would otherwise could go to the BJP or Modi, and thereby minimise the losses of the ruling party.

The party clearly has not learnt any lessons from the Delhi election results. The reason the Congress landed up with just eight seats, after securing a two-third majority in the Delhi assembly in successive elections, was due to increased competition between its two challengers, the BJP and AAP. It is now an open secret that the Congress virtually bent over backwards to give Arvind Kejriwal support, despite his harsh words about the party and its leadership, in order to curtail the BJP's prospects in the event the Delhi assembly elections were held around the time of the Parliamentary elections.

The rise of the AAP has the BJP worried. PTI

The performance of newly appointed Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely during Kejriwal's trust vote was telling. Lovely didn't seem to be downcast over his party's complete decimation in the elections and being forced to play a subservient role. Instead in his half-hour-long speech, he spoke of the irony that the BJP couldn't come to power despite being the single largest party in the assembly. Many see his stance as an indicator of how Congress was shaping its policy for the upcoming general elections.

The BJP's leadership and cadre are worried about the rise of AAP and the kind of attention that it has been getting since the Congress decided to support it to form a government in Delhi. The party is now trying to reformulate its electoral strategy and is also waiting for AAP to slip up.

Senior AAP leader Prashant Bhushan's statement seeking a referendum in Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian Army's continued presence in Kashmir was perhaps the first real opportunity. The most articulate and urbane face of the BJP, Arun Jaitley went ballistic about it and other leaders also joined in.

The AAP also suffered some embarassment when its young Women and Child Welfare Minister, Rakhi Birla, pressurised cops to lodge and FIR and alleged a conspiracy by unidentified persons when the windshield of her car was accidentally broken by a child playing cricket. The child's family had claimed that they had apologised to the minister on the spot.

And then came another contentious demand for hiking the quota for disadvantaged social groups from senior AAP leader Yogendra Yadav. Though other political parties would not comment on the issue for obvious reasons, it has sparked off a raging debate on social media. Interestingly, a substantive section of young AAP supporters and sympathisers are firm believers in abolishing such quotas.

Incidents like these do cast some doubts about the AAP's thought process and ability to provide a long term governance model, but they would still be considered too trivial to adversely impact the party's rise.

The AAP's decision to go national and talk about Arvind Kejriwal running for PM, though he has denied any plans to contest parliamentary elections, has made the run up to the elections even more interesting. There is a feeling among leaders of some political parties, most prominently the BJP, that the Congress knew that 2014 elections was a lost case for it. The party was routed in last month's assembly elections in four north Indian states and could well predict its fate in the parliamentary polls. It was therefore focussed not so much about winning a third term at the centre, but to minimise the scale of its defeat and prevent Modi's victory to a level which might find potential allies gravitating towards the BJP.

However, the Congress leadership is perhaps discounting the fact that though AAP is gaining ground in the middle class, and also in a section of youth, which otherwise was presumed to be a solid Modi constituency, it is making deeper inroads in Congress's social constituency of urban poor.

The Muslim community too is weighing AAP rise with great deal of curiosity. The Congress has so far been banking on the fact that the Muslim community would be against Modi and would therefore cast their votes in in their favour.

Though the AAP's case is slightly different from its predecessors, the Congress leadership in the past has experimented by nurturing splinter groups and new political outfits to contain its rival's prospects and boost its own. It has been successful in some experiments and failed it others.

Telugu super star Chiranjeevi forming a new party ahead of Andhra Pradesh state elections served as a boon to the Congress as it cut into the anti-incumbency votes, which could have otherwise gone to the TDP. The actor has since then joined the Congress and is the tourism minister in UPA 2.

It is widely speculated that the Congress and NCP supported Raj Thackeray's ambitions and provided his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena the support to stand against the Shiv Sena. The split in the Shiv Sena's traditional support base has hurt the BJP-Shiv Sena combine's chances of winning for the last two assembly polls.

But in two other instances, in Punjab and in Gujarat, its flirtation with Manpreet Badal and Keshubhai Patel failed to have any popular impact. In the last Gujarat elections it was known to all and sundry that dissident Keshubhai Patel's GPP was fighting a proxy battle for the Congress. The party had banked heavily on Kehubhai's influence in the Saurashtra region to try and undermine Modi campaign for a third term, but it failed miserably.

Senior BJP leaders are of the opinion that since Modi had already gained a lot of traction among the electorate and created a buzz even in rural areas, it would be very difficult, if not impossible to undermine his campaign.

A close Modi aide said the BJP had already gained such a large lead that the AAP would not be able to play spoiler even if ate into Modi's support base. He cited the example of Delhi, where many in the party believe that if the party had announced Harsh Vardhan's name as its chief ministerial candidate well in advance, rather than just a month ahead of the actual date of polling, the results would have been different. Modi has also already completed his first round of campaigning in almost all states before rivals could even start contemplating it.

The BJP is no longer taking AAP lightly and is consistently trying to highlight AAP's mistakes, big or small. A case in point is the Prashant Bhushans' statement on a referendum in Kashmir. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley has equated that with separatist anti-national stance.

"It is regrettable that for a party like the Aam Aadmi Party which nourishes national ambitions, should adopt a position hostile to India's interests. The issues of national security cannot be decided by populism or referendum. They can only be decided on security considerations," he said in a statement.

However, for now, the Congress can take heart from one fact. Kewjriwal is making bigger headlines than Modi. The BJP is hoping that the coverage of the AAP's will reduce after it reaches saturation at some point.

Yellen punches through ‘glass ceiling’ at US Fed

Washington: Janet Yellen - a skilled economist who likes to hike and cook - made history on Monday as the U.S. Senate confirmed her to be the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve in its 100-year history.

Yellen, 67, the central bank's No. 2 since 2010, will take over as chair of the Fed after Ben Bernanke's term comes to a close at the end of this month. In doing so, she will take the reins of the world's largest economy and become the most powerful person in the world of finance.

"Her well-deserved ascension to the chair knocks a notable hole in the glass ceiling that has for far too long kept women from the most powerful jobs in the country," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

Janet Yellen. AP

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, a liberal advocacy group, told Reuters she hoped Yellen's confirmation would pave the way for other women to climb to the top rungs of finance.

"The financial industry is a place where women have been aggressively excluded from the top, top management," O'Neill said. "Janet Yellen can make a difference."

Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the 11 Republicans who voted for Yellen, expressed the same hope.

"I wish that we had more senior women in these financial circles," she said. "And perhaps with her leadership that will act as a motivator to young women to get into the field."

In a 1995 interview, Yellen noted that women were under-represented at the highest levels of most groups and said she thought it would likely take a long time for that to change.

"I've had a lot of opportunities in my life," Yellen told the Minneapolis Fed. "I don't feel that I've faced discrimination. I've had every chance to succeed and more, and I think that's what all women should have."

Prior to becoming the Fed's vice chair, Yellen served as president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. She also had served a stint on the Fed's board in the 1990s and was a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.

She is married and has an adult son, holds degrees from two Ivy League colleges -- Brown and Yale -- and taught at a third, Harvard.

She has written extensively on a wide variety of economic issues, particularly those involving the causes and implications of unemployment.

"The confirmation of Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve should be celebrated as a monumental step forward for our nation," said Neera Tanden, president of the liberal policy group Center for American Progress.

Yellen will take the helm at the Fed just as most of the central bank's other female Fed policymakers leave or prepare to depart: Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke left in August, Sarah Bloom Raskin is expected to vacate her board seat soon, and Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto has announced plans to retire.

Those departures leave just one woman besides Yellen in the top ranks at the Fed: Esther George, the chief of the Kansas City Fed, whose opposition to the central bank's massive monetary stimulus puts her at odds with the incoming Fed chief.

Reuters