100 Communication and Cash Crop Production in the Karakorum: Exchange Relations under Transformation Hermann Kreutzmann 1. Introduction In 1990, the South Commission advocated the preeminent importance o f the satisfaction o f basic needs as the goal o f development activities in Third World countries. T h s approach, begun in the 1970s (cf. BURKI & MAHBOOB UL HAQ 198 I), has introduced a measurement o f development based on the availability o f basic resources like shelter, food, and work to the needy people o f a society. Besides the role o f access to those resources, an important aspect o f this concept is how and where people manage to fulfil these basic needs. The most crucial aspect in a socioeconomic analysis o f a given regional setting is composed of the exchange relations it has to extra- regional markets and employment centres. This relationship in space and time reveals the potential o f endogenous productive forces and the d egr ee o f de- pendence on external support and supplies. These exogenous influences cause internal transformation processes affecting all aspects o f life. How is a local economic system modified by outside interventions and by linking its com- munication network to that o f a national economy? This basic question o f de- velopme n t studies has to be raised again in order to understand the transfor- mation processes and innovations in a given study area like the Karakorum. One o f the main communication features o f the present-day Hunza Valley is the Karakorum Highway following the line of the Hunza River from Khunjer- ab Pass down the valley to where it joins the Gilgit River and subsequently the Indus. 1bis highway and additional linkroads have established a traffic network that within the last two decades, has connected 97% o f all vill ag es to a motorable road and transport system. This fact characterises a d egr ee of accessibility not reached in any other mountain system o f the Hindukush- Himalaya high-mountain belt o f the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. My h yp o- thesis in this paper is this: The construction o f the Karakorum Highway (KKH) has enhanced and amplified the southward-directed exchange relations of the Hunza Valley that had originated from an earlier period. In this context, we expect an intensification of highland-lowland exchange relations and, at the same time, a transformation o f all sections o f the household economy with an impact on the allocation o f labour and resources.