Drawing on ethnographic material about a set of Nepalese cultural practices known as ‘nutabad —ciypabad’, ‘favouritism’, the paper attempts; first, to chart the meaning favouritism has for Nepalis in their everyday encounters with central administration and the forms these interactions take and their cultural significations; second, to examine the way the idea of favouritism is constructed by the Westernized intellectuals to mean corruption and their reasons for so doing. The key sociological concept utilized for this analysis is ‘power’, specifically its operation in the field of political ethics centring on a conflict between two opposing ideologies; one advocated by the Westernized intellectuals who are pressing for the adoption of the principle of ‘impartiality’ in government; the other being that which is inherent in the Hindu traditional mode of statecraft wherein the institution of ‘the favour’ and therefore ‘partiality’ as a value is paramount and is in accord with Hindu c