Southeast Asia’s falling literacy: can cash and gamification fix it?

Singaporean Najwa Alhabshi remembers spending her teenage years poring over literary classics such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and George Orwell’s 1984. The books introduced her to ideologies, philosophies and the American dream while expanding her vocabulary. But as work commitments grew, the pages of her books started yellowing. Finding time to read became harder, and her smartphone screen eventually took over. “I think I just fell out of reading,” the 35-year-old tutor said....