It’s not only his Chief Mentor title that N.R. Narayana Murthy, the Infosys founder, has taken from Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew whom he greeted here in 2005 with the memorable words: “I have two heroes. One is Mahatma Gandhi, and the other is you!” Infosys’s CM seems also to have taken to heart the Singapore MM’s advice to join politics.

“When will we have people like you going for elections?” Lee had asked when they met, saying he could “transform India” by multiplying Infosys’s culture of excellence. Lee regretted later that Narayana Murthy laughed away his suggestion.

CM is still coy about taking the plunge. “I am too old to contest an election,” he says. “Sixty years is the age, I personally feel, when all of us should enter vanaprasthashram. I don’t think 60 years is the age when you start politics.” Presumably, he makes an exception for veterans like Manmohan Singh and L.K. Advani who started earlier.

But Narayana Murthy is edging close to it. He has extended support to a raft of Independent candidates, including Air Deccan’s founder (“The ex-army captain and farmer who made the common man fly through Air Deccan”), G.R. Gopinath, who is contesting from Bangalore South. And, on Thursday, Infosys played host to all four Bangalore South contestants in a unique display of amiable banter.

The three others were the BJP’s Ananth Kumar, Krishna Byregowda of the Congress and E.K. Radhakrishnan representing the Janata Dal (Secular).

Back on his home ground, Gopinath hides his formidable entrepreneurial light under a bushel of simplicity as he addresses a packed room up three steep flights of stairs. The doorway is at the end of a narrow lane in scruffy Chikpet under a banner, “A Hearty Welcome to Captain G.R. Gopinath”. A smart young man with gelled hair who might easily have been a disco deejay introduces him. His listeners are young men in ties, some even wearing jackets in the sweltering heat.

But this is not yuppie Bangalore, which is notoriously indifferent to politics. These are local sales reps and the like who drink in Gopinath’s exhortation that “the most important job is to create jobs”. His new venture, Deccan Cargo and Express Logistics, due to be launched in early May, will do just that. It will not allow him to be a full-time politician. But it will also free him from the need to abuse his parliamentary status to make money like other members. Gopinath vows to “fight criminalisation of politics”.

His argument for rejecting any party label — “Your brain is mortgaged to the high command” — sounds plausible enough until you remember that he fought the 1994 state Assembly election from Gandsi in Hassan district on a BJP ticket and lost. Making a virtue of necessity is second nature in politics.

Like Meera Sanyal in Mumbai and Mallika Sarabhai in Ahmedabad, Gopinath is still that rare bird — an upper middle class achiever who finances his own campaign. Karnataka has about 400 Independents (including an autorickshaw driver) out of a national tally of perhaps 4,000.

Narayana Murthy is all for them. “Independents who stand for honesty, truth and national development need not become part of any political party at all,” he says. “Independent members are a critical mass and if they could form a bloc which stands for honesty and truth, it is good for democracy.”

Fine sentiments but not easily translated in the interplay of money and caste that decides the outcome. Only two Independents have ever made it to the Lok Sabha from Karnataka, one in 1957 and the other a decade later. Even the versatile Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Sarojini Naidu’s brother, was defeated in 1957. Gopinath’s kite (his symbol) may fly high but remains a kite.

That could explain why another local man, also with a tenuous Singapore connection, is sitting on the fence. Then 42, R.K. Misra, a Bangalore businessman, had created a stir in 2007 by suddenly flying into Singapore and announcing his intention to seek MM’s wisdom on giving up his business “to do something for his country”.

That guaranteed instant publicity but Lee warned Misra to think very carefully about his affiliation and be prepared “for a very long and rough ride”. There was no guarantee, MM warned, that the Congress would win the next election. Joining the wrong party could mean the wilderness for five years.

Publicity-conscious Misra donned the saffron on March 21, but though prominent in campaigns to create political awareness among Bangaloreans, he is not a candidate. Perhaps he wasn’t given a ticket. Perhaps he is still keeping an escape route open. Hedging your bets is the name of the game in Karnataka.