Baseline data also revealed awareness of handwashing before eating and after defecation among a majority of the adult population in Punjab. Almost 80 percent of the respondents were aware of the importance of handwashing at the baseline. Large improvements were noticed across treatment and control groups after project implementation. In the weighted data, awareness of the importance of handwashing after defecation increased to 91 percent of the adult respondents for the control group and between 95 and 96 percent for the three treatment arms. Similarly, 88 percent of the respondents from the control arm and between 92 to 95 percent of the respondents from the treatment arms reported awareness of the importance of handwashing before eating at the midline.

The use of soap before eating in both treatment and control arms was relatively low at the baseline and improved considerably post implementation. Use of soap in the control arm increased from 56 percent of adult respondents at baseline to 71 percent at midline—an improvement of 15 percentage points. The corresponding improvements in the three treatment arms were between 22 to 23 percentage points post implementation. In contrast, use of soap after defecation was relatively high at the baseline. Ninety-two percent of respondents in the control arm and 84 to 88 percent of respondents in the treatment arms reported using soap after defecation at the baseline. Increases in the use of soap after defecation were modest post implementation. While the use of soap increased by 2 percentage points in the control arm and by around 4 percentage points in arm 3, improvements in arms 1 and 2 were relatively higher, at 9 percentage points and 7 percentage points, respectively. The unweighted summary statistics relating to hygiene awareness and hygienic behaviors among adults were very similar to the weighted ones.

In the baseline survey, around 18 to 20 percent of households from the treatment and the control arms reported the treatment of drinking water, which increased by 2 to 5 percentage points post implementation. So, the impact of the project on households’ decision to treat drinking water was limited. Moreover, safe-disposal practices of child feces in households with toilets seem to have deteriorated post completion. In the control arm, 68 percent of households at baseline reported using safe practices to dispose of child feces, which declined to around 65 percent at the midline. A similar pattern was observed in the treatment arms as well, though the magnitudes of the decline were much larger—around 6 percentage points for arm 1, 15 percentage points for arm 2, and 17 percentage points for arm 3.

Around 81 percent of school-going children in the treatment arms and 83 percent in the control arm were aware of the importance of handwashing before eating at the baseline. In the control arm, this awareness increased to 87 percent at midline. Larger improvements were noticed in the treatment arms, where between 95 and 96 percent of school-going children reported being aware of the importance of handwashing before eating, post completion. Awareness of the importance of handwashing after defecation also followed almost identical patterns before and after the project in both control and 24