India, Sept. 17 -- What if you could earn money simply by picking up a book and reading for 15 minutes a day? Singapore is giving its citizens a reason to swap some of their doomscrolling time for reading, with a new government-backed initiative that rewards them for logging their reading minutes.

The city-state launched the ReadSG campaign, a five-year national programme aimed at nurturing reading habits. Introduced by the country's National Library Board (NLB) earlier this month.

The idea is straightforward: read a little every day, track your progress on a government website and collect rewards along the way.

The initiative comes amid concerns about shrinking attention spans and the growing popularity of short-form digital content. ...