For the first time in 18 years, Indian has been ranked as less corrupt than China in the annual global corruption perceptions survey conducted by Transparency International (TI).
The last time India pipped China was in 1996.
India also managed to jump 9 places from 94 in 2013 to be placed at 85 in 2014.
The results of the survey "Corruption Perceptions Index" for 2014 were released by the global corruption watchdog on Wednesday, covering more than 175 countries.
Interestingly, China tumbled 20 places down to 100, according to the survey.
India's case was helped by street protests spearheaded by Gandhian Anna Hazare earlier and the recent national elections held early this year, which was largely contested on the plank of corruption.
The main opposition party, the BJP, consistently raked up charges of corruption against the previous Congress government.
Narendra Modi, who spearheaded the campaign for the BJP and became Prime Minister of India in May, vowed to fight corruption.
In China, despite president Xi Jinping loudly expressing his move to end corruption in the country by arresting a number of high profile political and military leaders, many observers are not convinced by his campaign.
Sri Lanka shares its ranking with India.
Other than Bhutan at 30, all of India's neighbours fared poorly in the survey. Pakistan and Nepal are placed at 126, while Bangladesh is at 145 and Afghanistan almost at the bottom at 172.
Poor score in the corruption index is a combined result of "widespread bribery, lack of punishment for corruption and public institutions that don't respond to citizens' needs."
The two countries that seem to have a high quotient of these are Somalia and North Korea, ranked last at 174.
The results published under "Corruption Perceptions Index 2014: Results" also reveal that not a single country got a perfect score, while more than two-thirds of them scored below 50, on a scale that ranges from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The least-corrupt countries in the world are Denmark and New Zealand with a score of 92 and 91 respectively. They topped in last year's charts as well.
